“Mother love is stronger than the filth and scabbiness on a child, and so the love of God toward us is stronger than the dirt that clings to us.”

Source: Resurrection, 1971-1996

1990s, Prison interviews and interrogations (1995)

Variant: Love stands opposed to death. It is love, not reason, that is stronger than death.
Source: The Magic Mountain (1924), Ch. 6; variant translation: It is love, not reason, that is stronger than death. Only love, not reason, gives sweet thoughts. And from love and sweetness alone can form come: form and civilization.
Context: Love stands opposed to death. It is love, not reason, that is stronger than death. Only love, not reason, gives kind thoughts.

P 24
The Piano Teacher (1988)

Orthodoxy (1884)
Context: Only a little while ago, when the great flood came upon the Ohio, sent by him who is ruling the world and paying particular attention to the affairs of nations, just in the gray of the morning they saw a house floating down and on its top a human being. A few men went out to the rescue. They found there a woman, a mother, and they wished to save her life. She said: “No, I am going to stay where I am. In this house I have three dead babes; I will not desert them.” Think of a love so limitless—stronger and deeper than despair and death! And yet, the Christian religion says, that if that woman, that mother, did not happen to believe in their creed God would send her soul to eternal fire!

Source: Shine

Source: The Forbidden Game

Source: The Unfinished System of Nonknowledge