Oh, the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person; having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but to pour them all out, just as they are, chaff and grain together, knowing that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then, with the breath of kindness, blow the rest away.

George Eliot


To regret one’s own experiences is to arrest one’s own development; to deny one’s own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one’s own life; it is no less than a denial of the soul. The important thing, the thing that lies before me, the thing that I have to do if the . . . remainder of my days is not to be maimed, marred and incomplete, is to absorb into my nature all that has been done to me, to make it part of me, accept it without complaint, fear or reluctance.

Oscar Wilde, De Profundis