dog

I have given a name to my pain and call it "dog." It is just as faithful, just as obtrusive and shameless, just as entertaining, just as clever as any other dog - and I can scold it and vent my bad mood on it, as others do with their dogs, servants, and wives. 

Friedrich Nietzsche in The Gay Science, 1887

Watcher In The Woods

“If we didn't have strong feelings, how could we love or fight? When our flesh is cut, we bleed. When our heart is broken, we cry. There's nothing wrong with that. It only becomes a problem when it gets in the way of what you have to do. You can't crumble when others are counting on you.”

Robert Liparulo

the last resort

"Although the outcome that we had hoped for did not materialise, I realized the dangers attendant upon such an operation, and I am satisfied that you did all within your power in a difficult situation. While no one could fortell the extent of the mental improvement had she lived, I think that it is providential that she should be taken as she was rather than, without the chance of an operation, that she should continue year afer year to suffer the mental agony which for so long had been her lot."

from Jack D. Pressman, Last Resort: Psychosurgery and the Limits of Medicine (1998)