Impatience of the Heart

by Stefan Zweig

I knew that there was no sense in denying oneself an enjoyment simply on the grounds that it is denied to others, to refuse some happiness to oneself because some other person is unhappy. I was perfectly aware that at any single moment, while we may be laughing away and cracking silly jokes, there is somebody somewhere languishing on a sickbed and nearing death, that behind a thousand windows there is wretchedness cowering, and people going hungry, that there are after all hospitals, quarries and coal-mines, that in factories, offices and penitentiaries people beyond number are slaving away at every hour of the day, and it will not make life any easier for one suffering individual if another punishes himself to no purpose. I knew perfectly well that, if we were to try to imagine the misery existing in the world at any given moment, it would destroy our sleep and choke all our laughter for ever more. But it is not the suffering we can abstractly conceive of, or theoretically imagine in our minds, that really dismays us; only that which has confronted our soul, that which we have had to look upon in compassion, can genuinely shake us.