"See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland."

 -- Isa 43:19

"Nalgron was speaking of courage, of honor, of prudence, of thoughtfulness in giving and punctillio in keeping your word, of following your heart, of setting and unswervingly striving toward a high, romantic goal, of self-honesty in all these things but especially in recognizing your aversions and desires, of the need to close your ears to the fears and naggings of women, yet freely forgive them all their jealousies, attempted trammelings, and even extremest wickednesses, since these all sprang from their ungovernable love."

-- Fritz Leiber

What happened to the world in which things like this were written and published? It wasn't all that long ago, but it seems like another age of the earth. And it's not even great literature; it's pulp fiction. 

"Do not pity the dead, Harry. Pity the living, and above all, those who live without love."

-- Albus Dumbledore 

"Death is but crossing the world, as friends do the seas; they live in one another still. For they must needs be present, that love and live in that which is omnipresent. In this divine glass, they see face to face; and their converse is free, as well as pure. This is the comfort of friends, that though they may be said to die, yet their friendship and society are, in the best sense, ever present, because immortal."

-- William Penn