Beware Of Pity Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Beware Of Pity. Here they are! All 100 of them:

No guilt is forgotten so long as the conscience still knows of it.
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity)
Treat people like people. Beware of pity and patronization because in them, you can't see when you're unashamedly looking down on someone.
Criss Jami (Killosophy)
Beware of pity.
Stefan Zweig
ولأول مرة في حياتي بدأت اتبين ان الضعف - لا الشر، ولا الوحشية - هو المسئول عن أسوأ الكوارث التي تقع في هذه الدنيا !
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity)
There are two kinds of pity. One, the weak and sentimental kind, which is really no more than the heart's impatience to be rid as quickly as possible of the painful emotion aroused by the sight of another's unhappiness, that pity which is not compassion, but only an instinctive desire to fortify one's own soul agains the sufferings of another; and the other, the only one at counts, the unsentimental but creative kind, which knows what it is about and is determined to hold out, in patience and forbearance, to the very limit of its strength and even beyond.
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity)
It is never until one realizes that one means something to others that one feels there is any point or purpose in one’s own existence.
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity (New York Review Books Classics))
I realized that there was no point in denying oneself a pleasure because it was denied another, in refusing to allow oneself to be happy because someone else was unhappy.
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity (New York Review Books Classics))
A lame creature, a cripple like myself, has no right to love. How should I, broken, shattered being that I am, be anything but a burden to you, when to myself I am an object of disgust, of loathing. A creature such as I, I know, has no right to love, and certainly no right to be loved. It is for such a creature to creep away into a corner and die and cease to make other people's lives a burden with her presence.
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity)
Once more my pity had been stronger than my will.
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity (New York Review Books Classics))
But theoretical, imagined suffering is not what distresses a man and destroys his peace of mind. Only what you have seen with pitying eyes can really shake you.
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity)
It is only the immeasurable, the limitless that terrifies us. That which is set within defined, fixed limits is a challenge to our powers, comes to be the measure of our strength.
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity (New York Review Books Classics))
لكني منذ تلك الساعة تبينت أنه ما من إثم يمكن ان يطويه النسيان .. ما دام ضمير صاحبه يذكره .!
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity)
Exalt yourself by devoting yourself to others, enrich yourself by making everyone’s destiny your own, by enduring and understanding every facet of human suffering through your pity.
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity (New York Review Books Classics))
Our decisions are to a much greater extent dependent on our desire to conform to the standards of our class and environment than we are inclined to admit. A considerable proportion of our reasoning is merely an automatic function, so to speak, of influences and impressions which have become part of us...
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity)
Shaken to the depths of your soul, you know that day and night someone is waiting for you, thinking of you, longing and sighing for you - a woman, a stranger. She wants, she demands, she desires you with every fiber of her being, with her body, with her blood. She wants your hands, your hair, your lips, your night and your day, your emotions, your senses, and all your thought and dreams. She wants to share everything with you, to take everything from you, and to draw it in with her breath. Henceforth, day and night, whether you are awake or asleep, there is somewhere in the world a being who is feverish and wakeful and who waits for you, and you are the centre of her waking and her dreaming. It is in vain that you try not to think of her, of her who thinks always of you, in vain that you seek to escape, for you no longer dwell in yourself, but in her. Of a sudden a stranger bears your image within her as though she were a moving mirror - no, not a mirror, for that merely drinks in your image when you offer yourself willingly to it, whereas she, the woman, this stranger who loves you, she has absorbed you into her very blood.
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity)
For the first time I began to perceive that true sympathy cannot be switched on and off like an electric current, that anyone that identifies himself with the fate of another is robbed to some extent of his own freedom.
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity)
It always demands a far greater degree of courage for an individual to oppose an organized movement than to let himself be carried along with the stream — individual courage, that is, a variety of courage that is dying out in these times of progressive organization and mechanization.
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity (New York Review Books Classics))
In medicine the use of the knife is often the kinder course.
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity (New York Review Books Classics))
For vanity, too, inebriates; gratitude, too, intoxicates; tenderness, too, can blissfully confuse the senses.
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity (New York Review Books Classics))
yet it may serve to show that courage is often nothing but inverted weakness.
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity (New York Review Books Classics))
Even if I had gone further than in all honesty I should have done, my lies, those lies born of pity, had made her happy; and to make a person happy could never be a crime.
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity (New York Review Books Classics))
no one would have pity on the foolish slave of his own pity.
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity (New York Review Books Classics))
What a mercy, I thought, that the crippled, the maimed, those whom Fate has cheated, at least in sleep have no knowledge of the shapeliness or unshapeliness of their bodies,
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity (New York Review Books Classics))
But spite is a wonderful thing for keeping people alive.
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity (New York Review Books Classics))
Books are almost as individual as friends. There is no earthly use in laying down general laws about them. Some meet the needs of one person, and some of another; and each person should beware of the booklover’s besetting sin, of what Mr. Edgar Allan Poe calls ‘the mad pride of intellectuality’, taking the shape of arrogant pity for the man who does not like the same kind of books.
Theodore Roosevelt
Whenever any kind of deep loss occurs in your life — such as loss of possessions, your home, a close relationship; or loss of your reputation, job, or physical abilities — something inside you dies. You feel diminished in your sense of who you are. There may also be a certain disorientation. “Without this...who am I?” When a form that you had unconsciously identified with as part of yourself leaves you or dissolves, that can be extremely painful. It leaves a hole, so to speak, in the fabric of your existence. When this happens, don't deny or ignore the pain or the sadness that you feel. Accept that it is there. Beware of your mind's tendency to construct a story around that loss in which you are assigned the role of victim. Fear, anger, resentment, or self-pity are the emotions that go with that role. Then become aware of what lies behind those emotions as well as behind the mind-made story: that hole, that empty space. Can you face and accept that strange sense of emptiness? If you do, you may find that it is no longer a fearful place. You may be surprised to find peace emanating from it. Whenever death occurs, whenever a life form dissolves, God, the formless and unmanifested, shines through the opening left by the dissolving form. That is why the most sacred thing in life is death. That is why the peace of God can come to you through the contemplation and acceptance of death.
Eckhart Tolle (Stillness Speaks)
الحظ دائماً شريك متطوع لخدمة المغامر الجسور.
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity)
They guillotined Charlotte Corday and they said Marat is dead. No, Marat is not dead. Put him in the Pantheon or throw him in the sewer; it doesn’t matter-he’s back the next day. He’s reborn in the man who has no job, the woman who has no bread, in the girl who has to sell her body, in the child who hasn’t learned to read; he’s reborn in the unheated tenement, in the wretched mattress without blankets, in the unemployed, in the proletariat, in the brothel, in the jailhouse, in your laws that show no pity, in your schools that give no future, and he appears in all that is ignorance and he recreates himself from all that is darkness. Oh, beware human society: you cannot kill Marat until you have killed the misery of poverty!
Victor Hugo
Pity, like morphine, does the sick good only at first. It is a means of helping them to feel better, but if you don't get the dose right and know where to stop it becomes a murderous poison.
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity)
is a broken man an outlaw?" "More or less." Brienne answered. Septon Meribald disagreed. "More less than more. There are many sorts of outlaws, just as there are many sorts of birds. A sandpiper and a sea eagle both have wings, but they are not the same. The singers love to sing of good men forced to go outside the law to fight some wicked lord, but most outlaws are more like this ravening Hound than they are the lightning lord. They are evil men, driven by greed, soured by malice, despising the gods and caring only for themselves. Broken men are more deserving of our pity, though they may be just as dangerous. Almost all are common-born, simple folk who had never been more than a mile from the house where they were born until the day some lord came round to take them off to war. Poorly shod and poorly clad, they march away beneath his banners, ofttimes with no better arms than a sickle or a sharpened hoe, or a maul they made themselves by lashing a stone to a stick with strips of hide. Brothers march with brothers, sons with fathers, friends with friends. They've heard the songs and stories, so they go off with eager hearts, dreaming of the wonders they will see, of the wealth and glory they will win. War seems a fine adventure, the greatest most of them will ever know. "Then they get a taste of battle. "For some, that one taste is enough to break them. Others go on for years, until they lose count of all the battles they have fought in, but even a man who has survived a hundred fights can break in his hundred-and-first. Brothers watch their brothers die, fathers lose their sons, friends see their friends trying to hold their entrails in after they've been gutted by an axe. "They see the lord who led them there cut down, and some other lord shouts that they are his now. They take a wound, and when that's still half-healed they take another. There is never enough to eat, their shoes fall to pieces from the marching, their clothes are torn and rotting, and half of them are shitting in their breeches from drinking bad water. "If they want new boots or a warmer cloak or maybe a rusted iron halfhelm, they need to take them from a corpse, and before long they are stealing from the living too, from the smallfolk whose lands they're fighting in, men very like the men they used to be. They slaughter their sheep and steal their chicken's, and from there it's just a short step to carrying off their daughters too. And one day they look around and realize all their friends and kin are gone, that they are fighting beside strangers beneath a banner that they hardly recognize. They don't know where they are or how to get back home and the lord they're fighting for does not know their names, yet here he comes, shouting for them to form up, to make a line with their spears and scythes and sharpened hoes, to stand their ground. And the knights come down on them, faceless men clad all in steel, and the iron thunder of their charge seems to fill the world... "And the man breaks. "He turns and runs, or crawls off afterward over the corpses of the slain, or steals away in the black of night, and he finds someplace to hide. All thought of home is gone by then, and kings and lords and gods mean less to him than a haunch of spoiled meat that will let him live another day, or a skin of bad wine that might drown his fear for a few hours. The broken man lives from day to day, from meal to meal, more beast than man. Lady Brienne is not wrong. In times like these, the traveler must beware of broken men, and fear them...but he should pity them as well
George R.R. Martin
The instinct of self-deception in human beings makes them try to banish from their minds dangers of which at the bottom they are perfectly aware by declaring them nonexistent, and a warning such as mine against cheap optimism was bound to prove particularly unwelcome at a moment when a sumptuously laid supper was awaiting for us in the next room.
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity)
الانسان لا يحس اي معنى او هدف لوجوده حتى يتبين انه في نظر غيره مخلوق له وزن واهمية واعتبار :! .
Stefan Zweig
her first glance at me would be bound to hold the question: have you forgiven me? And perhaps that still more critical question: will you bear with my love, and can you return it? That first moment when she would gaze up with a blush, a look of controlled and yet uncontrollable impatience, might be at once the most hazardous and decisive.
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity (New York Review Books Classics))
For when a woman resists an unwelcome passion, she is obeying to the full the law of her sex; the initial gesture of refusal is, so to speak, a primordial instinct in every female, and even if she rejects the most ardent passion she cannot be called inhuman. But how disastrous it is when fate upsets the balance, when a woman so far overcomes her natural modesty as to disclose her passion to a man, when, without the certainty of its being reciprocated, she offers her love, and he, the wooed, remains cold and on the defensive! An insoluble tangle this, always; for not to return a woman's love is to shatter her pride, to violate her modesty. The man who rejects a woman's advances is bound to wound her in her noblest feelings. In vain, then, all the tenderness with which he extricates himself, useless all his polite, evasive phrases, insulting all his offers of mere friendship, once she has revealed her weakness! His resistance inevitably becomes cruelty, and in rejecting a woman's love he takes a load of guild upon his conscience, guiltless though he may be. Abominable fetters that can never be cast off!
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity)
There are two kinds of pity. One, the weak and sentimental kind, which is really no more than the heart’s impatience to be rid as quickly as possible of the painful emotion aroused by the sight of another’s unhappiness ...; and the other, the only kind that counts, the unsentimental but creative kind, which knows what it is about and is determined to hold out, in patience and forbearance, to the very limit of its strength and even beyond.
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity (New York Review Books Classics))
Books are almost as individual as friends. There is no earthly use in laying down general laws about them. Some meet the needs of one person, and some of another; and each person should beware of the booklover’s besetting sin, of what Mr. Edgar Allan Poe calls ‘the mad pride of intellectuality,’ taking the shape of arrogant pity for the man who does not like the same kind of books.
Theodore Roosevelt
No envy is more mean than that of small-minded beings when they see a neighbor lifted, as though borne aloft by angels, out of the dull drudgery of their common existence; petty spirits are more ready to forgive a prince the most fabulous wealth than a fellow-sufferer beneath the same yoke the smallest degree of freedom.
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity)
Ακόμη και σήμερα, ύστερ' από τόσα χρόνια, δεν μπορώ να προσδιορίσω που τελείωσε η καθαρή απροσεξία μου, και πού άρχισε η υπαιτιότητά μου. Ίσως να μην το μάθω ποτέ.
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity)
She wanted, out of a kind of mysterious vindictiveness born of despair, to torture us with her torture, to arraign us, the hale and hearty, in the place of God.
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity (New York Review Books Classics))
States of profound happiness, like all other forms of intoxication, are apt to befuddle the wits; intense enjoyment of the present always makes one forget the past.
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity)
The instinct for self-deception in human beings makes them try to banish from their minds dangers of which at bottom they are perfectly aware by declaring them non-existent.
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity)
It's no use torturing oneself; it only tortures other people.
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity)
ever since he discovered that all his millions could not bring him back his wife, he has learned to despise money.
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity (New York Review Books Classics))
لو حاول شخص أن يفكر في مآسي الغير و يصور لنفسه صنوف البؤس التي تنطوي عليها الدنيا في كل وقت لاستعصى عليه النوم و ماتت البسمات على شفتيه إلى الأبد
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity)
الرجل الذي لا يبادل عاشقته عاطفتها إنما يمزق كبرياءها و هو حين يقابل تقربها منه و توددها إليه بالنفور و الإعراض إنما يطعنها في أعز مشاعرها و أنبلها و عبثا تكون عندئذ كل رقته و أدبه في التنصل منها بل إنه ليهينها إن عرض عليها صداقته الخالصة بعد أن تكون قد كشفت له ضعفها فإنها تعد ذلك منه جريمة خطيرة و قسوة بالغة
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity)
C'est seulement à partir de ce moment que je commençai à comprendre (ce que taisent la plupart du temps les écrivains) que les malades, les estropiés, les gens laids, fanés, flétris, les êtres physiquement inférieurs aiment au contraire avec plus de passion et de violence, que les gens heureux et bien portants ; ils aiment d'un amour fanatique, sombre, aucune passion sur terre n'est plus violente et avide que celle de ces désespérés, de ces bâtards de Dieu qui ne trouvent que dans l'amour d'autrui et pour autrui leur raison de vivre. Le fait que c'est précisément de l'abîme le plus profond de la détresse que s'élève le plus furieusement le cri panique du désir de vivre, ce terrible secret, jamais, dans mon inexpérience, je ne l'avais soupçonné. Et c'est seulement en cette minute qu'il avait pénétré en moi comme un fer brûlant.
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity)
Oh, mention it! If I storm, you have the art of weeping." "Mr. Rochester, I must leave you." "For how long, Jane? For a few minutes, while you smooth your hair — which is somewhat dishevelled; and bathe your face — which looks feverish?" "I must leave Adele and Thornfield. I must part with you for my whole life: I must begin a new existence among strange faces and strange scenes." "Of course: I told you you should. I pass over the madness about parting from me. You mean you must become a part of me. As to the new existence, it is all right: you shall yet be my wife: I am not married. You shall be Mrs. Rochester — both virtually and nominally. I shall keep only to you so long as you and I live. You shall go to a place I have in the south of France: a whitewashed villa on the shores of the Mediterranean. There you shall live a happy, and guarded, and most innocent life. Never fear that I wish to lure you into error — to make you my mistress. Why did you shake your head? Jane, you must be reasonable, or in truth I shall again become frantic." His voice and hand quivered: his large nostrils dilated; his eye blazed: still I dared to speak. "Sir, your wife is living: that is a fact acknowledged this morning by yourself. If I lived with you as you desire, I should then be your mistress: to say otherwise is sophistical — is false." "Jane, I am not a gentle-tempered man — you forget that: I am not long-enduring; I am not cool and dispassionate. Out of pity to me and yourself, put your finger on my pulse, feel how it throbs, and — beware!" He bared his wrist, and offered it to me: the blood was forsaking his cheek and lips, they were growing livid; I was distressed on all hands. To agitate him thus deeply, by a resistance he so abhorred, was cruel: to yield was out of the question. I did what human beings do instinctively when they are driven to utter extremity — looked for aid to one higher than man: the words "God help me!" burst involuntarily from my lips. "I am a fool!" cried Mr. Rochester suddenly. "I keep telling her I am not married, and do not explain to her why. I forget she knows nothing of the character of that woman, or of the circumstances attending my infernal union with her. Oh, I am certain Jane will agree with me in opinion, when she knows all that I know! Just put your hand in mine, Janet — that I may have the evidence of touch as well as sight, to prove you are near me — and I will in a few words show you the real state of the case. Can you listen to me?" "Yes, sir; for hours if you will.
Charlotte Brontë (Jane Eyre)
For the first time in my life I had received an assurance that I had been of use to someone on this earth, and my astonishment at the thought that I, a commonplace, unsophisticated young officer, should really have the power to make someone else so happy knew no bounds.
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity (New York Review Books Classics))
Es gibt eben zweierlei Mitleid. Das eine, das schwachmütige und sentimentale, das eigentlich nur Ungeduld des Herzens ist, sich möglichst schnell freizumachen von der peinlichen Ergriffenheit vor einem fremden Unglück, jenes Mitleid, das gar nicht Mit-leiden ist, sondern nur instinktive Abwehr des fremden Leidens von der eigenen Seele. Und das andere, das einzig zählt - das unsentimentale, aber schöpferische Mitleid, das weiß, was es will, und entschlossen ist, geduldig und mitduldend alles durchzustehen bis zum Letzten seiner Kraft und noch über dies Letzte hinaus.
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity)
Things are set up as contraries that are not even in the same category. Listen to me: the opposite of radical is superficial; the opposite of liberal is stingy; the opposite of conservative is destructive. Thus I will describe myself as a radical conservative liberal; but certain of the tainted red fish will swear that there can be no such fish as that. Beware of those who use words to mean their opposites. At the same time have pity on them, for usually this trick is their only stock in trade. But do not pity them overly, it is your own death and your soul's death that they work by their deception.
R.A. Lafferty
When one does another person an injustice, in some mysterious way it does one good to discover (or to persuade oneself) that the injured party has also behaved badly or unfairly in some little matter or other; it is always a relief to the conscience if one can apportion some measure of guilt to the person one has betrayed.
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity)
إن اللون الوحيد من الشجاعة الذي صادفني في الحرب هو شجاعة الجماعات ، تلك الشجاعة التي تنبع من شعور الشخص بأنه واحد من قطيع جرار و هي شجاعة تتألف من عناصر عجيبة مختلطة منها الغرور و الاستهتار و الضجر و منها قبل ذلك كله الخوف ، الخوف من التخلف عن موكب المحاربين و سخرية الناس و الخوف من اتخاذ موقف مخالف لموقف المجموع و حماسة الزملاء
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity)
Beware pride; it would have us seek revenge from those most deserving of our pity.
Wayne Gerard Trotman (Kaya Abaniah and the Father of the Forest)
Und der einzige wirklich beschwingte Glücksmoment, den ich der Schule zu danken habe, wurde der Tag, da ich ihre Tür für immer hinter mir zuschlug.
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity)
between a woman who has once let a man see her desire and that man the atmosphere is charged with mysterious, dangerous tension.
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity)
it is precisely from the lowest abysses of despair that the panic cries and groans of those hungry for love ring out most gruesomely.
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity)
...όποιος συμμετέχει στη δυστυχία του άλλου, χάνει κάτι απ΄τη δικιά του ελευθερία.
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity)
Για πρώτη φορά κατάλαβα πως το μεγαλύτερο κακό στον κόσμο δεν γίνεται απ'τη βαρβαρότητα, μα απ' την αδυναμία.
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity)
But I don't really know where to go. I have no plans and no destination in mind - I feel I can't live in either of my two worlds...
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity)
Her eyes were like coffee beans, and, when she laughed, they really did seem to crackle like roasting beans.
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity)
again and again we fall hopelessly into the foolish error of thinking that Nature sets a special stamp on outstanding individuals so that they may be recognized at a glance.
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity)
Unknown and unsuspected tender zones of feeling- but also, it must be admitted, very dangerous ones!
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity)
anyone who identifies himself with the fate of another is robbed to some extent of his own freedom.
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity)
Things half done and hints half given are always bad; all the evil in the world comes from half-measures.
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity)
Ο άνθρωπος εξυψώνεται όταν προσφέρει τον εαυτό του, γίνεται πλουσιότερος όταν αδερφώνεται με τη δυστυχία του άλλου, όταν καταλαβαίνει και συ,πονάει κάθε πόνο.
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity)
goodness and truth have never yet succeeded in curing humanity or even a single human being.
Stefan Zweig
it is always a relief to the conscience if one can apportion some measure of guilt to the person one has betrayed.
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity)
Only those with whom life had dealt hardly, the wretched, the slighted, the uncertain, the unlovely, the humiliated, could really be helped by love.
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity)
it's always good to know that one has saved at least one person, kept faith with one person, made a good job of one thing.
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity)
like all the millions of superfluous people who simply don’t know that every unimpeded step they take is a blessing and a glory?
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity (Woolf Haus Classics))
I could do nothing but marvel at this new girlish creature, who seemed more childish than ever in her joy, yet more womanly in her beauty. She noticed my faint astonishment and accepted it as a gift.
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity (Woolf Haus Classics))
a human being will accept the strictest disciplinary measures with a better grace if he knows that they will fall with equal severity on his neighbour. Justice in some mysterious way makes up for violence.
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity)
Perhaps I am taking a certain risk in placing more faith in you than in my professional conscience — ah well, I’ll take the responsibility for that. After all, we both mean equally well by this poor sick girl.
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity (Woolf Haus Classics))
My God!’ he murmured at length. ‘You’re taking on a hell of a lot, I can tell you! And the curious thing is that you infect other people with your almost religious faith — first those people out at Kekesfalva, and now, by degrees, even me.
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity (Woolf Haus Classics))
And I said to myself: from now on, help anyone and everyone so far as in you lies. Cease to be apathetic, indifferent! Exalt yourself by devoting yourself to others, enrich yourself by making everyone’s destiny your own, by enduring and understanding every facet of human suffering through your pity. And my heart, astonished at its own workings, quivered with gratitude towards the sick girl whom I had unwittingly hurt and who, through her suffering, had taught me the creative magic of pity.
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity (Woolf Haus Classics))
Out of pity — ever and again out of pity! — and perhaps, too, to keep at bay his melancholy importunity, I had at one time and another bought three or four of these sordid, badly printed volumes and then casually left them lying about on my shelves.
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity (Woolf Haus Classics))
It is true that whenever we have been told a great many interesting things about a person whom we have not yet met, our visual fantasy conjures up a picture of him beforehand, dipping liberally into the storehouse of our most precious and most romantic memories.
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity (Woolf Haus Classics))
By the way — I don’t want you to think that in my own mind I have “given up the case”, as we doctors so charmingly put it. On the contrary, it’s just at this point that I refuse to give in, even if things continue as they are for another year, another five years.
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity (Woolf Haus Classics))
Kekesfalva had told me: that Condor had a blind wife whom he had been unable to cure, and had married by way of penance, and that this blind woman, instead of being grateful to him, was a continual plague to him. But he put his hand on my arm with a warm, almost affectionate gesture.
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity (Woolf Haus Classics))
have heard, again, from other sources — you may laugh, but it is always madness that first gives one an insight into the intensity of a passion — that he has promised vast sums in the way of donations both to the synagogue and to the parish priest in the event of his child’s recovery.
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity (Woolf Haus Classics))
... pity is a double-edged weapon. If you don’t know how to handle it you had better not touch it, and above all you must steel your heart against it. Pity, like morphine, does the sick good only at first. It is a means of helping them feel better, but if you don’t get the dose right and know where to stop it becomes a murderous poison.
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity)
Believe me, we doctors are not so immoderately fond of “good”, submissive patients as you may think. They are the ones who least help us to help them. To us, vigorous and even frantic resistance on the part of a patient can only be welcome, for, strangely enough, these apparently unreasonable reactions sometimes have more effect than our most miraculous nostrums.
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity (Woolf Haus Classics))
Jackson stood quietly as Alani came into the house. Unlike the other women, she didn’t wear a swimsuit. Shame. He’d love to see her in one. Everyone had duly celebrated Trace’s engagement, and Alani seemed taken with Priss—but then, who wouldn’t be? Priss was funny, smart, cute and—luckily for Trace—stacked. Unaware of Jackson, Alani stopped to look out the patio doors. She looked . . . wistful. Like maybe she wanted to take part, but couldn’t. In so many ways, despite being kidnapped by flesh peddlers, or maybe because of that, she was still an innocent. At just-barely twenty-three, she acted much older. Like a virgin spinster. Every night, in his dreams, they burned up the sheets. Here, in reality, she avoided him. She avoided involvement. But he’d get her over that. Somehow. Suddenly Priss came in, wet hair sleek down her back, rivulets of water trailing between her breasts. She spotted Jackson right off and, after smiling at Alani, asked them both, “Why aren’t you guys coming down to swim?” Alani jerked around to stare at Jackson with big eyes. His crooked smile told her that he had her in his sights. “I was just about to ask Alani that.” Priss laughed. “You’re still dressed.” “I can undress fast enough.” He looked at Alani. “What about you?” Her lips parted. “No, I . . . didn’t bring a suit.” “Pity. Maybe we could move up to the cove and skinny-dip in private?” Pointing a finger at him, Priss said, “Behave, you reprobate!” And then to Alani, “Beware of that one.” Still watching him, Alani nodded.
Lori Foster (Trace of Fever (Men Who Walk the Edge of Honor, #2))
I had never even thought of Edith as a member of the opposite sex; it had never even so much as crossed my mind that her crippled body was possessed of the same organs, that her soul harboured the same urgent desires, as those of other women. It was only from this moment that I began to have an inkling of the fact (suppressed by most writers) that the outcasts, the branded, the ugly, the withered, the deformed, the despised and rejected, desire with a more passionate, far more dangerous avidity than the happy; that they love with a fanatical, a baleful, a black love, and that no passion on earth rears its head so greedily, so desperately, as the forlorn and hopeless passion of these step-children of God, who feel that they can only justify their earthly existence by loving and being loved.
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity (New York Review Books Classics))
the outcasts, the branded, the ugly, the withered, the deformed, the despised and rejected, desire with a more passionate, far more dangerous avidity than the happy; that they love with a fanatical, a baleful, a black love, and that no passion on earth rears its head so greedily, so desperately, as the forlorn and hopeless passion of these step-chlidren of God, who feel that they can only justify their earthly existence by loving and being loved.
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity)
But I don’t want your sacrifices. I don’t want you to feel you have to dole out your daily dose of pity — I don’t care two straws for you all and your precious pity — once and for all, I tell you, I can do without your pity. If you want to come here, then for heaven’s sake come, and if you don’t, well then don’t, but for God’s sake be frank and let us have no more of your stories about remounts and trying out new horses! I cannot … I cannot stand these lies and your revolting indulgence any longer.
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity (Woolf Haus Classics))
And Ferencz seized the opportunity — why is it that the stupidest people are always the most good-natured? — to urge his horse forward as if by chance and to whisper to me: ‘Don’t let it get you down. A thing like that might happen to anyone.’ But he was out of luck, poor chap. ‘Will you kindly mind your own business,’ I flared up at him, and turned away abruptly. In that moment I had learned for the first time, and at first-hand, how deeply one can be wounded by tactless pity. For the first time, and too late.
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity (Woolf Haus Classics))
Incurable — that is, after all, only a relative, not an absolute, concept. For a progressive science such as medicine incurable cases are only so for the time being, within the time-limits of our own age, within the compass of our present knowledge, that is to say, within the limits of our restricted perspective. But it’s not a question merely of the moment. In hundreds of cases where today we know of no cure, tomorrow, the day after, a cure may be found, for medical science is, after all, making tremendous strides.
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity (Woolf Haus Classics))
A handsome prince fights a terrible, beautiful dragon and slays him then carries the head home strapped to his saddle. The lesson is obvious. When one is a monster, one does well to beware knights in shining armor. A good lesson for Eleanor." Zach heard the meaning behind Søren's words. "Nora is not a monster. She's not perfect obviously. But she's a good person, and to call her a monster is ridiculous." "You know her that well, do you?" Soren asked, turning to face him full-on. "Before tonight she scared you, didn't she? Her fearlessness, her brazeness, I'm sure it's terrifying at first. Foreign to those who lead proverbial life of quiet desperation as I imagine you do. She scared you with the sheer force of her life and being. But now you look around and think her courage is merely a byproduct of her damage. You imagine I abused her, changed her. And you would save her, as Wesley imagines he can? You would be her knight in shining armor? Yes, before you feared her and now you pity her. I assure you, Zachary, you were right the first time.
Tiffany Reisz (The Siren (The Original Sinners, #1))
Nonsense! Everything is simple if you really set your mind on it. Don’t get it into your head that you’re indispensable. Someone else would drill your Ruthenian blockheads while you were away. And by the way, Papa could fix up things with regard to your leave in half an hour. He knows a dozen people at the War Office, and at a word from higher quarters you’ll get what you want. It really wouldn’t do you any harm, either, to see something of the world outside your riding school and parade ground. No more excuses now — the matter’s settled. Papa will see to it.
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity (Woolf Haus Classics))
I don’t over-estimate you, or by any means look upon you as a “wonderful and good person”, as Kekesfalva so eulogistically refers to you, but as one who, because of the instability of his emotions, because of a certain impatience of the heart, is a thoroughly unreliable colleague. Glad as I am to have put a stop to your senseless project, I am not at all pleased by the hasty way in which you take decisions and are then deflected from your purpose. People who are so much at the mercy of their moods should never be given serious responsibilities. You would be the last person to whom I should entrust a task that required perseverance and unwavering resolution.
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity (Woolf Haus Classics))
Epilogue to Book I. Alas! the forbidden fruits were eaten, And thereby the warm life of reason was congealed. A grain of wheat eclipsed the sun Of Adam, l Like as the Dragon's tail 2 dulls the brightness of the moon. Behold how delicate is the heart, that a morsel of dust Clouded its moon with foul obscurity! When bread is "substance," to eat it nourishes us; When 'tis empty "form," it profits nothing. Like as the green thorn which is cropped by the camel, And then yields him pleasure and nutriment; When its greenness has gone and it becomes dry, If the camel crops that same thorn in the desert, It wounds his palate and mouth without pity, As if conserve of roses should turn to sharp swords. When bread is "substance," it is as a green thorn; When 'tis "form," 'tis as the dry and coarse thorn. And thou eatest it in the same way as of yore Thou wert wont to eat it, O helpless being, Eatest this dry thing in the same manner, After the real "substance" is mingled with dust; It has become mingled with dust, dry in pith and rind. O camel, now beware of that herb! The Word is become foul with mingled earth; The water is become muddy; close the mouth of the well, Till God makes it again pure and sweet; Yea, till He purifies what He has made foul. Patience will accomplish thy desire, not haste. Be patient, God knows what is best.
Rumi (Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi) (The Masnavi I Manavi of Rumi Complete 6 Books)
About his madmen Mr. Lecky was no more certain. He knew less than the little to be learned of the causes or even of the results of madness. Yet for practical purposes one can imagine all that is necessary. As long as maniacs walk like men, you must come close to them to penetrate so excellent a disguise. Once close, you have joined the true werewolf. Pick for your companion a manic-depressive, afflicted by any of the various degrees of mania - chronic, acute, delirious. Usually more man than wolf, he will be instructive. His disorder lies in the very process of his thinking, rather than in the content of his thought. He cannot wait a minute for the satisfaction of his fleeting desires or the fulfillment of his innumerable schemes. Nor can he, for two minutes, be certain of his intention or constant in any plan or agreement. Presently you may hear his failing made manifest in the crazy concatenation of his thinking aloud, which psychiatrists call "flight of ideas." Exhausted suddenly by this riotous expense of speech and spirit, he may subside in an apathy dangerous and morose, which you will be well advised not to disturb. Let the man you meet be, instead, a paretic. He has taken a secret departure from your world. He dwells amidst choicest, most dispendious superlatives. In his arm he has the strength to lift ten elephants. He is already two hundred years old. He is more than nine feet high; his chest is of iron, his right leg is silver, his incomparable head is one whole ruby. Husband of a thousand wives, he has begotten on them ten thousand children. Nothing is mean about him; his urine is white wine; his faeces are always soft gold. However, despite his splendor and his extraordinary attainments, he cannot successfully pronounce the words: electricity, Methodist Episcopal, organization, third cavalry brigade. Avoid them. Infuriated by your demonstration of any accomplishment not his, he may suddenly kill you. Now choose for your friend a paranoiac, and beware of the wolf! His back is to the wall, his implacable enemies are crowding on him. He gets no rest. He finds no starting hole to hide him. Ten times oftener than the Apostle, he has been, through the violence of the unswerving malice which pursues him, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils of his own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren, in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness. Now that, face to face with him, you simulate innocence and come within his reach, what pity can you expect? You showed him none; he will certainly not show you any. Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, 0 Lord; and by thy great mercy defend us from all the perils and dangers of this night; for the love of thy only Son, our Saviour, Jesus Christ. Amen. Mr. Lecky's maniacs lay in wait to slash a man's head half off, to perform some erotic atrocity of disembowelment on a woman. Here, they fed thoughtlessly on human flesh; there, wishing to play with him, they plucked the mangled Tybalt from his shroud. The beastly cunning of their approach, the fantastic capriciousness of their intention could not be very well met or provided for. In his makeshift fort everywhere encircled by darkness, Mr. Lecky did not care to meditate further on the subject.
James Gould Cozzens (Castaway)
So that was it! This was the secret, so belatedly revealed, of her restlessness, her hitherto inexplicable aggressiveness. I was appalled. I felt like one who, stooping innocently over a flower, is stung by an adder. If the hypersensitive creature had struck me, reviled me, spat at me, I should have been less disconcerted, for in view of her uncertain temper I was prepared for anything but this one thing — that she, an invalid, a poor, afflicted cripple, should be able to love, should desire to be loved; that this child, this half-woman, this immature, impotent creature, should have the temerity (I cannot express it otherwise) to love, to desire, with the conscious and sensual love of a real woman.
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity (Woolf Haus Classics))
I realized that to mortify oneself in this way was stupid and useless. I realized that there was no point in denying oneself a pleasure because it was denied another, in refusing to allow oneself to be happy because someone else was unhappy. I realized that all the time one was laughing and cracking silly jokes, somewhere in the world someone was lying at the point of death; that misery was lurking, people starving, behind a thousand windows; that there were such things as hospitals, quarries and coal-mines; that in factories, in offices, in prisons countless thousands toiled and moiled at every hour of the day, and that it would not relieve the distress of a single human being if yet another were to torment himself needlessly.
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity (Woolf Haus Classics))
But there are two kinds of pity. One, the weak and sentimental kind, which is really no more than the heart’s impatience to be rid as quickly as possible of the painful emotion aroused by the sight of another’s unhappiness, that pity which is not compassion, but only an instinctive desire to fortify one’s own soul against the sufferings of another; and the other, the only kind that counts, the unsentimental but creative kind, which knows what it is about and is determined to hold out, in patience and forbearance, to the very limit of its strength and even beyond. It is only when one goes on to the end, to the extreme, bitter end, only when one has an inexhaustible fund of patience, that one can help one’s fellows. Only when one is prepared to sacrifice oneself in doing so — and then only!
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity (Woolf Haus Classics))
And the young man takes pity on him — pity, you fool, why do you take pity on him? I thought — and in his eagerness to help he actually bends down and sets the old man on his shoulders, pick-a-back fashion. But this apparently helpless old man is a djinn, an evil spirit, a scoundrelly magician, and no sooner is he seated on the young man’s shoulders than he clamps his hairy, naked thighs round his benefactor’s throat in a vice-like grip and cannot be dislodged. Mercilessly he makes of the young man who has taken pity on him a beast of burden, spurs him on and on, pitilessly, relentlessly, never granting him a moment’s rest. The luckless young man is obliged to carry him wherever he asks, and from now on has no will of his own. He has become the beast of burden, the slave, of the old rascal: no matter if his knees give and his lips are parched with thirst, he is compelled, foolish victim of his own pity, to trot on and on, is fated to drag the wicked, infamous, cunning old man along for ever on his back.
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity (Woolf Haus Classics))
But the very fact that she took such a foolish trifle so seriously moved me, and, in order to calm her, I took refuge in a playful tone. ‘Oh, that’s nothing,’ I said teasingly, ‘nothing of any consequence. A naughty child upset some tea over me.’ Her eyes were still troubled. But she gratefully jumped at the opportunity of turning the whole thing into a joke. ‘And did you give the naughty child a good whacking?’ ‘No,’ I replied, keeping the ball rolling. ‘It wasn’t necessary. The child has been good again for a long time now.’ ‘And you’re really not angry with her any more?’ ‘Not a bit. You should have heard how prettily she asked to be forgiven.’ ‘You won’t bear her any grudge?’ ‘No, it’s all forgiven and forgotten. But she must go on being a good girl and do as she’s told.’ ‘And what is the child to do?’ ‘To be always patient, always friendly, and always merry. Not to sit in the sun too long, to go out for lots of drives and obey the doctor’s orders to the letter. And now the child must go to sleep and not talk or worry her head any more. Good night.
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity (Woolf Haus Classics))
You come here, you tell me, because I’m so “alone” — that is, in other words, because I’m tied to this confounded chaise-longue. That’s the only reason you come trotting out here every day, simply to play the Good Samaritan to a “poor, sick child” — that’s what you all call me, I expect, when I’m not there — I know, I know. It’s only out of pity that you come. Oh yes, I believe you — what’s the use of denying it now? You’re one of those so-called “good” people, you like to be called so by my father. “Good people” of that kind take pity on every whipped cur and every mangy cat — so why not on a cripple?’ And suddenly she sat bolt upright, and a spasm shook her rigid frame. ‘Thank you for nothing! I can do without the kind of friendship that is only shown me because I’m a cripple … Yes, you needn’t screw your eyes up like that! Naturally, you’re upset at having let the cat out of the bag, at having admitted that you come to see me only because I “make your heart bleed”, as that charwoman said — except that she said it frankly and straight out. You however, as a “good person” express yourself far more tactfully, far more “delicately”; you beat about the bush, and say you come just because I have to sit about here alone all day long. It’s simply out of pity that you come,
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity (Woolf Haus Classics))
Do you think I’m so silly that I can’t understand your sometimes getting fed up with playing the Good Samaritan here day after day, can’t realize that a grown man would rather go for a ride or take his sound legs for a walk than sit about by an invalid’s chair? There’s only one thing that disgusts me, one thing I can’t stand, and that is excuses, humbug, lies — I’m fed to the teeth with them. I’m not so stupid as you all think, and I can stand quite a lot of frankness. A few days ago we engaged a new charwoman in place of the old one who had died, and the very first day she was here, before she had talked to anyone — she saw me being helped across to an arm-chair on my crutches. She dropped her scrubbing brush in horror and screamed out: “Lord Jesus, such a rich, distinguished young lady … being a cripple!” Ilona went for the poor, honest creature like a wild thing; she was going to dismiss her and throw her out on the spot. But I, I liked it, the woman’s horror did me good, because, after all, it is honest, it is human, to be horrified at seeing such a sight all of a sudden. I promptly gave her ten crowns and she went off to the church to pray for me. The whole day I felt glad, yes, positively glad, at knowing at last what others really feel when they see me for the first time
Stefan Zweig (Beware of Pity (Woolf Haus Classics))