“Take with you all human emotions. Do not leave them on the road, for you will not pick them up later.”
— Nikolai Gogol
From Dead Souls, Chapter 6 (1842), Gogol's direct address to the reader about not losing one's humanity with age.
I wrote those words in Rome at thirty-three, feeling something harden inside me. Every year I noticed it: what used to move me stopped moving me. The tears of the boy from Sorochyntsi, the laughter, the rage, all fading. I wanted to warn you before the same happens. Whatever you feel now, however painful, do not numb it. Do not trade it for comfort. You will want it back and it will be gone.