replacing a casual aquaintance with an ordinary daughter does not make a son. - Gertrude Stein

In tender hearted natures, those that mostly never feel strong passion, suffering often comes to make them harder. When these do not know in themselves what it is to suffer, suffering is then very awful to them and they badly want to help everyone who has to suffer, and they have a deep reverence for anybody who knows really how to always suffer. But when it comes to them to really suffer, they soon begin to lose their fear and tenderness and wonder. Why it isn't so very much to suffer, when even I can bear to do it. It isn't very pleasant to be having all the time, to stand it, but they are not so much wiser after all, all the others just because they know too how to bear it.

There ain't no answer. There ain't going to be any answer. There never has been an answer. That's the answer. (Gertrude Stein: In Words and Pictures)

The thing that is most interesting about government servants is that they believe what they are supposed to believe, they really do believe what they are supposed to believe.