“Great beauty is often perceived by human senses as pain.”

“It did not often happen; for Mr. John Knightley had really a great regard for his father-in-law, and generally a strong sense of what was due to him; but it was too often for Emma's charity, especially as there was all the pain of apprehension frequently to be endured, though the offense came not.”

“Why do philosophers in the South so often end as newspapermen, poets as doctors? Maybe they crave what's found in pain and loss: a sense of living among other human beings. They'll give up dreams for that.”

“Pain explains a great deal of human conduct, but the fear of pain even more.”

“ It is impossible – now, at this point in the long journey of human culture – to avoid the sense that pain is necessity; that it is neither accident, nor malformation, nor malice, nor misunderstanding, that it is integral to the human character both in its inflicting and in its suffering, this terrible sense Tragedy alone has articulated, and will continue to articulate, and in so doing, make beautiful…”

“To be alive in this beautiful, self-organizing universe -- to participate in the dance of life with senses to perceive it, lungs that breathe it, organs that draw nourishment from it -- is a wonder beyond words.”