And one from a contemporary master:

Life will break you. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth.
You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken or betrayed or hurt or left or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an  apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.


-Louise Erdrich