Beware of Pity (Stefan Zweig)
- 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.
- 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.
- On the whole, more men had perhaps escaped into the war than from it.
- 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. During the war practically the only courage I ran across
was mass courage, the courage that comes of being one of a herd, and
anyone who examines this phenomenon more closely will find it to be
compounded of some very strange elements: a great deal of vanity, a
great deal of fear — yes, fear of staying behind, fear of being sneered
at fear of independent action, and fear, above all, of taking up a stand
against the mass enthusiasm of one's fellows.
- Everywhere soldiering entails the same busily empty monotony; hour
after hour is mapped out in accordance with inflexible, antediluvian
regulations, and even one's leisure does not seem to offer much in the
way of variety. In the officers' mess the same faces, the same
conversation; at the cafe the same games of cards and billiards.
- 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.
- Inevitably, in the secret chemistry of the emotions the feeling of
pity for a sick person is imperceptibly bound up with tenderness.
- Unhappiness makes people vulnerable, incessant suffering unjust.
Just as in the relations between a creditor and a debtor there is always
an element of the disagreeable that can never be overcome, for the very
reason that the one is irrevocably committed to the role of giver and
the other to that of receiver, so in a sick person a latent feeling of
resentment at every obvious sign of consideration is always ready to
burst forth.
- In some mysterious way, once one has gained an insight into human
nature, that insight grows from day to day, and he to whom it has given
to experience vicariously even one single form of earthly suffering
acquires, by reason of this tragic lesson, an understanding of all its
forms, even those most foreign to him, and apparently abnormal.
- Long-protracted suffering is apt to exhaust not only the invalid,
but the compassion of others; violent emotions cannot be prolonged
endlessly.
- But it is the way of youth that each fresh piece of knowledge of
life should go to its head, and that once uplifted by an emotion it can
never have enough of it.
- And I said to myself: From now on help anyone and everyone so far as
it lies within your power. 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 to the sick girl whom I had hurt
unwittingly and who, through her suffering, had taught me the creative
magic of pity.
- One's emotional state is always determined by the oddest and most
accidental things, and it is precisely the most superficial factors that
often fortify or diminish our courage.
- The avaricious are thrifty with time as well as money.
- 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.
- The union of opposites, in so far as they are really complementary,
always results in the most perfect harmony; and the seemingly
incongruous is often the most natural.
- 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.
- It is a blessing not yet to have acquired that over-keen,
diagnostic, misanthropic eye, and to be able to look at people and
things trustfully when one first sees them.
- A doctor should never try to cure the incurable.
- 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!
- There is nothing that so raises a young man's self-esteem, that so
contributes to the formation of his character as for him to find himself
unexpectedly confronted with a task which he has to accomplish entirely
on his own initiative and by his own efforts.
- Anger makes one not only malign but sharp-sighted.
- The sight of a wedding always has a disturbing effect on young
girls; at such moments a mysterious sense of solidarity with their own
sex takes possession of them.
- After experiencing profound emotions, one sleeps profoundly.
- 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.
- When a dozen men are harnessed to the same cart, one always pulls
harder than the others, and when it's a question of promotion and
seniority, it's easy to tread on the toes of the man ahead of you. At
every word one utters one has to be on one's guard; one's never quite
sure whether it isn't going to arouse the disapproval of the big bugs;
there's always a storm in the offing.
- The word 'service' comes from serving, and serving means being dependent.
- He who is himself crossed in love is able from time to time to
master his passion, for he is not the creature but the creator of his
own misery; and if a lover is unable to control his passion, he at least
knows that he is himself to blame for his sufferings. But he who is
loved without reciprocating that love is lost beyond redemption, for it
is not in his power to set a limit to that other's passion, to keep it
within bounds, and the strongest will is reduced to impotence in the
face of another's desire. Perhaps only a man can realize to the full the
tragedy of such an undesired relationships; for him alone the necessity
to resist t is at once martyrdom and guilt. 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! Only a moment ago you
felt free, you belonged to yourself and were in debt to no one, and now
suddenly you find yourself pursued, hemmed in, prey and object of the
unwelcome desires of another. 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 fibre of her being, with her body,
with her blood. She wants your hands, your hair, your lips, your
manhood, 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. She
carries you always within her, carries you about with her, no mater
whither you may flee. Always you are imprisoned, held prisoner,
somewhere else, in some other person, no longer yourself, no longer free
and lighthearted and guiltless, but always hunted, always under an
obligation, always conscious of this "thinking-of-you" as if it were a
steady devouring flame. Full of hate, full of fear, you have to endure
this yearning on the part of another, who suffers on your account; and I
now know that it is the most senseless, the most inescapable,
affliction that can befall a man to be loved against his will - torment
of torments, and a burden of guilt where there is no guilt.
- If you are going to sell yourself, you should at least get a good price.
- Why is it that the stupidest people are always the most good-natured?
- Only a numskull is pleased at being a so-called 'success' with
women, only a dunderhead is puffed up by it. A real man is much more
likely to be dismayed at realizing that a woman has lost her heart to
him when he can't reciprocate her feelings.
- Everything in life that deviates from the straight and, so to speak, normal line, makes people first curious and then indignant.
- People who are so much at the mercy of their moods should never be given serious responsibilities.
- Those whom fate has dealt hard knocks remain vulnerable for ever afterwards.
- One can run away from anything but oneself.
- Was it not the most wonderful thing on earth to be able to help
one's fellow-creatures? I now knew that it was the only thing that was
worth while.
- In my youth and comparative inexperience I had always regarded the
yearning and pangs of love as the worst torture that could afflict the
human heart. At this moment, however, I began to realize that there was
another and perhaps grimmer torture than that of longing and desiring:
that of being loved against one's will and of being unable to defend
oneself against the urgency of another's passion; of seeing another
human being seared by the flame of her desire and of having to look
impotently, lacking the power, the capacity, the strength to pluck her
from the flames. He who is himself crossed in love is able from time to
time to master his passion, for he is not the creature but the creator
of his own misery; and if a lover is unable to control his passim, he at
least knows that he is himself to blame for his sufferings.
- The feeling of self-assurance derived from physical achievement always transfers itself to the mental sphere.
- A man of limited vision is hard to bear with in any sphere in which he is invested with power, but intolerable in the army.
- 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
neighbor. Justice in some mysterious way makes up for violence.
- 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, and anyone who has been brought up from
childhood in the stern school of military discipline is particularly apt
to succumb to the hypnotic and compulsive force exercised by an order
of word of command; a force which is logically entirely incomprehensible
and which irresistibly undermines his will. In the straitjacket of a
uniform, even though fully aware of their absurdity, an officer will
carry out his instructions lie a sleep-walker, unresistingly and almost
unconsciously.
- It is not the healthy, the confident, the proud, the joyous, the
happy, that one must love - they have no need of one's love! Arrogant
and indifferent, they accept love only as homage that is theirs to
command, as their due. The devotion of another is to them a mere
embellishment, an ornament for the hair, a bracelet on the arm, not the
whole meaning and bliss of their lives. Only those with whom life has
dealt hardly, the wretched, the slighted, the uncertain, the unlovely,
the humiliated, could really be helped by love. He who devotes his life
to them atones to them for what life has taken from them. They alone
know how to love and be loved as one should love - gratefully and
humbly.
- The heart is able to bury deep and well what is urgently desires to forget.
- No guilt is forgotten so long as the conscience still knows of it.
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