The sea has neither meaning nor pity. - Anton Chekhov

Ah, but ignorance is better. At least then there's hope.

When he reached the street where the school was, he would feel ashamed of being followed by a tall, stout woman, he would turn round and say: "You'd better go home, auntie. I can go the rest of the way alone." She would stand still and look after him fixedly till he had disappeared at the school-gate. Ah, how she loved him! Of her former attachments not one had been so deep; never had her soul surrendered to any feeling so spontaneously, so disinterestedly, and so joyously as now that her maternal instincts were aroused. For this little boy with the dimple in his cheek and the big school cap, she would have given her whole life, she would have given it with joy and tears of tenderness. Why? Who can tell why?

The government is not God. It does not have the right to take away that which it can’t return even if it wants to.