Mercy often inflicts death. Troades

Adapt yourself to the environment in which your lot has been cast, and show true love to the fellow-mortals with whom destiny has surrounded you. Book VI

Even while I protest the assembly-line production of our food, our songs, our language, and eventually our souls, I know that it was a rare home that baked good bread in the old days. Mother’s cooking was with rare exceptions poor, that good unpasteurized milk touched only by flies and bits of manure crawled with bacteria, the healthy old-time life was riddled with aches, sudden death from unknown causes, and that sweet local speech I mourn was the child of illiteracy and ignorance. It is the nature of a man as he grows older, a small bridge in time, to protest against change, particularly change for the better. Travels with Charley: In Search of America

Their return home to their father and a good life was always so satisfying and splendid; I realized keenly that that was the only proper, good, and desirable outcome, but the part of the story that took place among the wicked and the lost was by far the more appealing, and, if one were free to state and admit it, it was sometimes actually a downright shame that the prodigal repented and was found again Demian