"When you love someone, you love the person as they are, and not as you'd like them to be."
"The sobs and tears of joy he had not foreseen rose with such force within him that his whole body shook and for a long time prevented him from speaking. Falling on his knees by her bed. He held his wife's hand to his lips and kissed it, and her hand responded to his kisses with weak movement of finger. Meanwhile, at the foot of the bed, in the midwife's expert hands, like the flame of a lamp, flickered the life of a human being who had never existed before."
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Source: Leo Tolstoy (1987). “A Confession and Other Religious Writings”, p.248, Penguin UK
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