Chalk it Up to Those Harsh Russian Winters
 
'Love in practice is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams.'
--the elderly monk Staretz Zosima, in Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamozov, speaking to a wealthy woman who tells him she often dreams of dedicating her life to service to the poor, but who hesitates out of worries over their likely ingratitude (item via an article on Catholic Worker founder Dorothy Day, in the current Sojourner's Magazine).