“Gratitude is a sickness suffered by dogs.”
As quoted in The Memoirs of Stalin's former secretary (1992) by Boris Bazhanov [Saint Petersburg] (in Russian) http://lib.ru/MEMUARY/BAZHANOW/stalin.txt
Contemporary witnesses
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Joseph Stalin 95
General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union 1879–1953Related quotes
“Hope deferred is sickness to the heart — and she was now suffering that sickness, at its worst.”
Other Gift Books
“Love of God is pure when joy and suffering inspire an equal degree of gratitude.”
Source: Gravity and Grace
A Hazard Of New Fortunes, Ch. XI
Context: The life of Christ, it wasn't only in healing the sick and going about to do good; it was suffering for the sins of others. That's as great a mystery as the mystery of death. Why should there be such a principle in the world? But it's been felt, and more or less dumbly, blindly recognized ever since Calvary. If we love mankind, pity them, we even wish to suffer for them. That's what has created the religious orders in all times--the brotherhoods and sisterhoods that belong to our day as much as to the mediaeval past. That's what is driving a girl like Margaret Vance, who has everything that the world can offer her young beauty, on to the work of a Sister of Charity among the poor and the dying.
Beware of Pity (1939)
1 October 1849
Journal Intime (1882), Journal entries
Context: Heroism is the brilliant triumph of the soul over the flesh — that is to say, over fear: fear of poverty, of suffering, of calumny, of sickness, of isolation, and of death. There is no serious piety without heroism. Heroism is the dazzling and glorious concentration of courage.
Meditation 8 - Illness as a special gift from God
Books, The Beggar, Volume III: False Ego: The Greatest Enemy of the Spiritual Leader (Hari-Nama Press, 2002)