"Why is love beyond all measure of other human possibilities so rich and such a sweet burden for the one who has been struck by it? Because we change ourselves into that which we love, and yet remain ourselves. Then we would like to thank the beloved, but find nothing that would do it adequately. We can only be thankful to ourselves. Love transforms gratitude into faithfulness to ourselves and into an unconditional faith in the Other. Thus love steadily expands its most intimate secret. Closeness here is existence in the greatest distance from the other- the distance that allows nothing to dissolve - but rather presents the “thou” in the transparent, but “incomprehensible” revelation of the “just there”. That the presence of the other breaks into our own life - this is what no feeling can fully encompass. Human fate gives itself to human fate, and it is the task of pure love to keep this self-surrender as vital as on the first day.”

“Emotional maturity, we are just beginning to glimpse, may mean capacity to feel truly, in relation to the facts of our world, the feelings of others; and also to create in our responses to others a relationship of “feeling together” which is something different from and better than single individuals could experience alone. So little do we know about this that we have scarcely any vocabulary to talk about it. But something like this is at the basis, we are sure, of acting together, for out of common feeling much more than from shared intellectual concepts comes the capacity to cooperate for valued ends.”