Knowing what is right or wrong is intelligence. Acting on that knowledge and doing the right is character.

Our greatest pains are the ones that are caused by the people who we had once loved very fondly. Rightly so as the thing that can touch our core only has the power to shake and stir us.

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Life would have been much simpler if only we had the power to love someone and un-love someone at our own will.

While its so easy for us to trust a stranger readily, its so difficult to trust someone you love. Especially after having been betrayed once.

There's a truth deeper than experience. It's beyond what we see, or even what we feel. It's an order of truth that separates the profound from the merely clever, and the reality from the perception. We're helpless, usually, in the face of it; and the cost of knowing it, like the cost of knowing love, is sometimes greater than any here would willingly pay. It doesn't always help us to love the world, but it does prevent us from hating the world.

- Shantaram