alice, or The Mysteries, Book VIII 7.6.76

alice, or The Mysteries, Book VIII - The affections are stronger than all our reasonings.  We must take them into our alliance, or they will destroy all our theories of self-government. Such fools of fate are we, passing from system to system, from scheme to scheme, vainly seeking to shut out passion and sorrow-forgetting that they are born within us--and return to the soul as the seasons to the earth!  Yet,--years, many years ago, when I first looked gravely into my own nature and being here, when I first awakened to the dignity and solemn responsibilities of human life, I had resolved to tame and curb myself into a thing of rule and measure.  Bearing within me the wound scarred over but never healed, the consciousness of wrong to the heart that had leaned upon me, haunted by the memory of my lost Alice, I shuddered at new affections bequeathing new griefs.  Wrapped in a haughty egotism, I wished not to extend my empire over a wider circuit than my own intellect and passions.

• Alice, or The Mysteries, Book X by Edward Bulwer Lytton.
• And Alice!--Will the world blame us if you are left happy at the last?
• We are daily banishing from our law-books the statutes that disproportion
  punishment to crime.
• Daily we preach the doctrine that we demoralize wherever we strain justice into cruelty.
• It is time that we should apply to the Social Code the Wisdom we recognize in Legislation! 
• It is time that we should do away with the punishment of death for inadequate
  offences, even in books.
• It is time that we should allow the morality of atonement, and permit to Error the right to hope, as the reward ofsubmission to its suffering.
• Nor let it be thought that the close to Alice's career can offer temptation to the offence of its commencement.
• Eighteen years of sadness, a youth consumed in silent sorrow over the grave of Joy, have images that throw over these pages a dark and warning.