Beware of Pity
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Read between November 6 - November 17, 2024
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he discovered that all his millions could not bring him back his wife, he has learned to despise money.
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but it is always madness that first gives one an insight into the intensity of a passion
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for goodness and truth have never yet succeeded in curing humanity or even a single human being. If a deception helps, then it is no longer a shabby deception but a first-class remedy,
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Why seek to dispel this exuberance which so lights up her whole being, why torture her with one’s doubts?
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to give lavishly of oneself — to spend and squander some of the superabundance of one’s happiness.
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pity is a confoundedly two-edged business. Anyone who doesn’t know how to deal with it should keep his hands, and, above all, his heart, off it. It is only at first that pity, like morphia, 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.
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a dangerous thing, pity, a dangerous thing! You can see for yourself what your weakness has done.’
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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 ...more
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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.
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For the first time in my life I began to realize that it is not evil and brutality, but nearly always weakness, that is to blame for the worst things that happen in this world.
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In this respect I was lame, I walked on crutches.
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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.
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Never had I, even in my wildest dreams, imagined that invalids, cripples, the immature, the prematurely aged, the despised and rejected, the pariahs among human beings, dared to love.
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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. That it is precisely from the lowest abysses of despair that the panic cries and groans of those hungry for love ring out most gruesomely
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pity is far too lukewarm and fraternal a feeling, and but a sorry substitute for real love.
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so excruciating was the thought of being loved against my will,
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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.
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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 the other’s passion, to keep it within bounds, and the strongest will is reduced to impotence in the face of another’s desire.
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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.
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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 thoughts and dreams. ...more
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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 matter where you may flee.
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Always you are imprisoned, held prisoner somewhere else, in some other person, no longer yourself, no longer free and light-hearted and guiltless, but always hunted, always under an obligation, always conscious of this ‘thinking-of-you’ as though it were a steady devouring flame. Full of hate, full of fear, you have to endure this yearning on the part of a being 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 no guilt is.
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that every form of love, even the most ridiculous and absurd, is the destiny of someone, and that even by one’s indifference one can incur a debt to love. But all that one has heard and read passes one by; it is only from personal experience that the heart can learn the true nature of its emotions.
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I should have to hurt a cripple, to wound more deeply than ever one who had already been grievously wounded by Life, to snatch from one who was inwardly unsure of herself the last crutch of hope with which she kept herself erect. I knew that by fleeing from her love I should perhaps imperil the life and the reason of this girl who had aroused in me so pure an emotion of pity.
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that I should never have the selfless strength to love the crippled girl as she loved me, and, probably, not even enough pity simply to bear with this unnerving passion. At the first recoil I had divined that there was no way out, no middle course. Either the one or the other of us, perhaps both, was bound to be made unhappy by this futile love.
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I deliberately treated you harshly and contemptuously, so that you should have no inkling of how my heart burned for you — I tried everything that lies in the power, and beyond the power, of a human being.
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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.
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and for a moment I forgot my wretched legs, I saw only you, felt myself to be what I wanted to be for your sake. Can’t you understand one’s losing oneself in a day-dream for a moment, when one has dreamed only one dream day and night, year in year out? Believe me, beloved — it was only the crazy illusion that I had cast off my deformity that so went to my head; it was only my impatient yearning not to be an outcast, a cripple, any longer that caused my heart to run away with me so madly. Do understand — I had wanted you so long and so interminably.
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Forgive me, my heart’s beloved, for this love, and above all I implore you — do not be afraid of me, do not shrink from me! Do not think that because I have once been importunate I shall trouble you again, that I, infirm and abhorrent to myself as I am, will try to hold you. No, I swear to you — you shall never find me forcing myself upon you, I shall try to hide my feelings from you. I only want to wait, wait patiently, until God takes pity on me and makes me well. And so I implore you — do not be afraid, dearest, of my love.
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Remember that I am a prisoner who has to wait in my prison, to wait always in impatient patience, until you come and bestow an hour of your time upon me, until you permit me to look at you, to hear your voice, to know we are breathing the same air, to feel your presence, the first and only happiness that has been granted to me for years.
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even this agonizing happiness has nevertheless been happiness,
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I can no longer deny and dissimulate my feelings for you, do not be cruel to me, I implore you. Even the most wretched, the most pitiable creature has her pride, and I could not bear it if you were to despise me because I could not keep my heart in check.
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But is it really too much to grant a human being this pitiful modicum of happiness, which one willingly allows to any dog, the happiness of gazing up dumbly now and then at his master? Is it necessary to thrust it away violently, to drive it away scornfully with a whip?
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I of all people, who recoil in horror from myself when I see the great weights on my feet, I alone, who know how beastly, how petulant, how impossible, how intolerable I have become in my impatience, I of all people should be able to understand why others should recoil in horror from me.
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How could they laugh like that when somewhere someone was groaning in despair, suffering boundless torments? How could they crack smutty jokes when someone was in agony of soul?
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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.
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To see no one any more, never to let oneself be idolized, be humiliated again!
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In all our actions vanity is, after all, one of the most powerful driving forces, and weak natures in particular succumb to the temptation to do something which, viewed superficially, makes them appear strong, courageous and resolute.
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I was running away because I could not bear to be loved against my will.
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Good God, could this unattractive, plain woman be his wife! Horrible to feel oneself being stared at by those sightless orbs and to know that one was not seen!
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even his voice seemed like a caress.
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Talk a woman out of being in love? Tell her she ought not to feel as she does feel? Not to love when she does love? That would be about the worst thing one could possibly do, and the stupidest into the bargain. Have you ever heard of logic prevailing against passion?
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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.
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that it is not so much that you are appalled at this poor child’s falling in love with you as that you’re afraid that other people may hear of it and sneer ... In my opinion your exaggerated distress is nothing but a kind of fear — if I may say so — of appearing ridiculous in the eyes of others, of your fellow-officers.’
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One knows how little one can really do to help; as an individual one can’t cope with the infinite wretchedness that exists all around us in the world. One merely bales a few drops out of the unfathomable ocean of misery with a thimble, and those whom one imagines one has cured today have a new malady tomorrow. One always has a feeling of having been remiss, negligent, and then there are the mistakes, the professional mistakes, that one inevitably makes — and so 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. One must ...more
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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.
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Those whom Fate has dealt hard knocks remain vulnerable for ever afterwards.’
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Because a human being wanted to cling to me, to get consolation from me? Was it not the most wonderful thing on earth to be able to help one’s fellow-creatures?
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It is characteristic of those who love to have an uncanny insight into the true feelings of the beloved; and since love, according to the inmost laws of its being, ever desires the illimitable, all finiteness, all moderation, is repugnant, intolerable to it.
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once more I was at the mercy of my pity.