It’s the great mystery of human life that old grief passes gradually into quiet, tender joy.
 Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov (1880). copy citation

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Author Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Source The Brothers Karamazov
Topic grief age joy
Date 1880
Language English
Reference
Note Translated by Constance Garnett
Weblink http://www.gutenberg.org/files/28054/28054-h/28054-h.html

Context

“But how could he love those new ones when those first children are no more, when he has lost them? Remembering them, how could he be fully happy with those new ones, however dear the new ones might be? But he could, he could. It's the great [pg 322] mystery of human life that old grief passes gradually into quiet, tender joy. The mild serenity of age takes the place of the riotous blood of youth. I bless the rising sun each day, and, as before, my hearts sings to meet it, but now I love even more its setting, its long slanting rays and the soft, tender, gentle memories that come with them, the dear images from the whole of my long, happy life—and over all the Divine Truth, softening, reconciling, forgiving!” source

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