Fyodor Dostoevsky in The Brothers Karamazov (via the excellent Kyle Bingman, who linked to Joshua Longbrake).
The problem with heedlessly rushing into love, which is the only good way to do it, is that you often choose lovers poorly, based on mysterious and powerful inclinations. They may be generated by sublimated psychological issues, perhaps having to do with your parents or your past, or we may just say “Love is irrational. There is nothing we can do about it.” But they never follow some hygienic matrix of rational calculations,
The consequence of these thrilling and poor choices is that you accrue scar tissue from your predictably failed relationships, and it becomes ever harder to open, to trust, to hope, to love. The difference for me between being young and old is that when I was young I worried no one would ever love me; now I worry whether or how well I can love others.
(Maybe this doesn’t happen to healthy people, which I wouldn’t hold against them).
(via mills)
Another great one. Italics mine.
(via seagull)