“Numinous,” Ursula said, breaking the silence eventually.  “There’s a spark of the divine in the world — not God, we’re done with God, but something.  Is it love?  Not silly romantic love, but something more profound…?”

“I think it’s perhaps something we don’t have a name for,” Teddy said.  “We want to name everything.  Perhaps that’s where we’ve gone wrong.”

“‘And whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.’  Having dominion over everything has been a terrible curse.”

Afterwards — because it turned out that there was to be an afterwards for Teddy — he resolved that he would try always to be kind.  It was the best he could do.  It was all that he could do.  And it might be love, after all.

(From A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson)