“She used to cry roughly three times a year. Now she seemed to cry three times before breakfast. Could that be considered progress?”

Source: Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman

Letter to his family (31 October 1931) http://www.skeptic.ca/Durruti.htm
Context: From my earliest years, the first thing that I saw was suffering. And if I couldn't rebel when I was a child, it was only because I was an unaware being then. But the sorrows of my grandparents and parents were recorded in my memory during those years of unawareness. How many times did I see our mother cry because she couldn't give us the bread that we asked for! And yet our father worked without resting for a minute. Why couldn't we eat the bread that we needed if our father worked so hard? That was the first question whose answer I found in social injustice. And, since that same injustice exists today, thirty years later, I don't see why, now that I'm conscious of this, that I should stop fighting to abolish it.
I don't want to remind you of the hardships suffered by our parents until we got older and could help out the family. But then we had to serve the so-called fatherland. The first was Santiago. I still remember mother weeping. But even more strongly etched in my memory are the words of our sick grandfather, who sat there, disabled and next to the heater, punching his legs in anger as he watched his grandson go off to Morocco, while the rich bought workers' sons to take their children's place …
Don't you see why I'll continue fighting as long as these social injustices exist?

Quoted in Somerset Maugham (1980) by Ted Morgan

Source: Going Bovine

Source: The Piper's Son

Source: Death Bringer

XI. 206–208 (tr. Robert Fagles); Odysseus attempting to embrace his mother's spirit in the Underworld.
Compare Virgil, Aeneid, II. 792–793 (tr. C. Pitt):
: Thrice round her neck my eager arms I threw;
Thrice from my empty arms the phantom flew.
Odyssey (c. 725 BC)

Source: The Book Thief

"Should Have Known Better"
Lyrics, Carrie and Lowell (2015)