Jamie Smith

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All impulses (as La Rochefoucauld would argue fourteen years later) are forms of self-love, and derive from the instinct of self-preservation. Pity is the imagination of future calamity to ourselves, aroused by perceiving another’s calamity; charity is the satisfied feeling of power in helping others. Gratitude sometimes includes a certain hostility.
The Age of Louis XIV: The Story of Civilization, Volume VIII
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