"There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be
vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and
possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you
must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully
round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock
it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness."
"But in that casket — safe, dark, motionless, airless — it will
change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable,
irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of
tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be
perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell."
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves, (New York, Harcourt, 1960),