Friday, March 29, 2024 Text is available under the CC BY-SA 3.0 licence.

Stefan Zweig

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It is only at first that pity, like morphine, is a solace to the invalid, a remedy, a drug, but unless you know the correct dosage and when to stop, it becomes a virulent poison. The first few injections do good, they soothe, they deaden the pain. But the devil of it is that the organism, the body, just like the soul, has an uncanny capacity for adaptation. Just as the nervous system cries out for more and more morphine, so do the emotions cry out for more and more pity, in the end more than one can give. Inevitably there comes a moment when one has to say 'no', and then one must not mind the other person's hating one more for this ultimate refusal than if one had never helped him at all. Yes, my dear Lieutenant, one has got to keep one's pity properly in check, or it does far more harm than any amount of indifference — we doctors know that, and so do judges and myrmidons of the law and pawn-brokers; if they were all to give way to their pity, this world of ours would stand still - a dangerous thing pity, a dangerous thing!

 
Stefan Zweig

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Our lives are awkward and fragile and we have only one thing to keep us sane: pity, and the man without pity is mad.

 
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I pity the university for not giving T enough time. You know I got all duded up, got dressed, the students were all ready for me, then they gave me short time. So I pity them. So if they want to be unpitied, they'll invite me back and give me more time.

 
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