Beware of Pity

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.

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

up an unconscious resistance to letting herself be observed.

But when you get four growing boys with voracious appetites and two girls in the family of an Austrian official, and there’s barely enough to feed them, you don’t bother much about their inclinations, but push them out at an early age into the treadmill of a profession, so that they won’t be a charge on the household any longer than necessary.

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.

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 .

two kinds of pity:

two kinds of pity:

She wanted, out of a kind of mysterious vindictiveness born of despair, to torture us with her torture.

She wanted, out of a kind of mysterious vindictiveness born of despair, to torture us with her torture.