Excerpts from "A Correspondence" by Ivan Turgenev (1899).

"Love, indeed, is not a feeling at all, it's a malady, a certain condition of soul and body. It does not develop gradually. One cannot doubt about it, one cannot outwit it, though it does not always come in the same way. Usually it takes possession of a person without question, suddenly, against his will--for all the world like cholera or fever.... It clutches him, poor dear, as the hawk pounces on the chicken, and bears him off at its will, however he struggles or resists.... In love, there's no equality, none of the so-called free union of souls, and such idealisms, concocted at their leisure by German professors.... No, in love, one person is slave, and the other master; and well may the poets talk of the fetters put on by love.  Yes, love is a fetter, and the heaviest to bear. At least I have come to this conviction, and have come to it by the path of experience; I have bought this conviction at the cost of my life, since I am dying in my slavery."

"Remember life deceives all but him who does not reflect upon her, and, demanding nothing of her, accepts serenely her few gifts and serenely makes the most of them.  Go forward while you can. But if your strength fails you, sit by the wayside and watch those that pass by without anger or envy. They, too, have not far to go."

"Death will teach anyone."