"We teach best what we most need to learn."
— Richard Bach (Illusions)

"'In one thing you have not changed, dear friend,' said Aragorn: 'you still speak in riddles.'

'What? In riddles?' said Gandalf. 'No! For I was talking aloud to myself. A habit of the old: they choose the wisest person present to speak to; the long explanations needed by the young are wearying.'"
— J.R.R. Tolkien (The Two Towers)

"Mirth is the Mail of Anguish --"
— Emily Dickinson

"I can wade Grief --
Whole Pools of it --
I'm used to that --
But the least push of Joy
Breaks up my feet --
And I tip -- drunken --
Let no Pebble -- smile --
'Twas the New Liquor --
That was all!"
— Emily Dickinson (Final Harvest: Poems)

"So this, Harriet thought, gazing at her black-clad reflection, was what bearing up looked like. The eyes in the mirror stared at her, somehow, while fixing themselves far away.

Bearing up, then, must be this: the feeling of perfect frozen stillness, so that to raise your hand was a wrenching and unnatural event. It was not being able to sleep or eat, and the small placid tone in which she heard herself decline the food. It was the presentiment that there must be a crack or a hole somewhere at hand down which she was to throw and extinguish herself, since there must surely be something provided to make this bearable."
— Jude Morgan