“Pain is a gift. Humanity, without pain, would know neither fear nor pity. Without fear, there could be no humility, and every man would be a monster. The recognition of pain and fear in others give rise in us to pity, and in our pity is our humanity, our redemption.”

Source: Velocity (2005), Chapter 54

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Dean Koontz157

American author 1945

Stephen Levine (1937–2016) American poet and author

“Our lives are awkward and fragile and we have only one thing to keep us sane: pity, and the man without pity is mad.”

Edward Bond Lear

Lear (1972), Act III, sc. iii

“For it is not death or pain that is to be feared, but the fear of pain or death.”

Epictetus (50–138) philosopher from Ancient Greece

Book II, ch. 1 http://classics.mit.edu/Epictetus/discourses.2.two.html <br class="br">Discourses <br class="br">Variant: For death or pain is not formidable, but the fear of pain or death.

“Without pain, there would be no suffering. Without suffering, we would never learn from our mistakes. To make it right, pain and suffering is the key to all windows, without it, there is no way of life.”

Angelina Jolie (1975) American actress, film director, and screenwriter

“We should not replace pity with fear in our relationship with the working class. It is a source of shame that Labour did not and does not represent the hopes and fears of the working class, by becoming a party that disapproves of their fears and is nervous of their hopes.”

Maurice Glasman, Baron Glasman (1961) British philosopher

Blue Labour, A Christmas Message http://www.bluelabour.org/2016/12/22/a-christmas-message-from-lord-glasman/

“No society has been able to abolish human sadness, no political system can deliver us from the pain of living, from our fear of death, our thirst for the absolute. It is the human condition that directs the social condition, not vice versa.”

Eugéne Ionesco (1909–1994) Romanian playwright

"A Reply to Kenneth Tynan: The Playwright's Role" in The Observer (29 June 1958)
Context: I believe that what separates us all from one another is simply society itself, or, if you like, politics. This is what raises barriers between men, this is what creates misunderstanding.
If I may be allowed to express myself paradoxically, I should say that the truest society, the authentic human community, is extra-social — a wider, deeper society, that which is revealed by our common anxieties, our desires, our secret nostalgias. The whole history of the world has been governed by nostalgias and anxieties, which political action does no more than reflect and interpret, very imperfectly. No society has been able to abolish human sadness, no political system can deliver us from the pain of living, from our fear of death, our thirst for the absolute. It is the human condition that directs the social condition, not vice versa.

“It was not possible for us nor did we want to become islands; the just (i giusti) among us, neither more nor less numerous than in any other human group, felt remorse, shame and pain for the misdeeds that others and not they had committed, and in which they felt involved, because they sensed that what had happened around them and in their presence, and in them, was irrevocable. Never again could it be cleansed; it would prove that man, the human species — we, in short — had the potential to construct an enormity of pain, and that pain is the only force created from nothing, without cost and without effort. It is enough not to see, not to listen, not to act.”

Primo Levi book The Drowned and the Saved

The Drowned and the Saved (1986)

“Running away from fear is fear; fighting pain is pain; trying to be brave is being scared. If the mind is in pain, the mind is pain. The thinker has no other form than his thought.”

Alan Watts (1915–1973) British philosopher, writer and speaker

The Wisdom of Insecurity (1951)

“Art is a hideously painful business, you know. Pity me! Or at least buy me a drink.”

Kevin Barry (1902–1920) 18 year old medical student and Irish republican, executed by Britain.

Interview with Kevin Barry (c. 2012)

“Have pity on our foolishness
And give us eyes, that we may see
Beneath the shopman's clumsy dress
The splendor of humanity!”

Joyce Kilmer Trees and Other Poems

Trees and Other Poems (1914), Delicatessen
Context: O Carpenter of Nazareth,
Whose mother was a village maid,
Shall we, Thy children, blow our breath
In scorn on any humble trade?
Have pity on our foolishness
And give us eyes, that we may see
Beneath the shopman's clumsy dress
The splendor of humanity!

“Pain is a gift. Humanity, without pain, would know neither fear nor pity. Without fear, there could be no humility, and every man would be a monster. The recognition of pain and fear in others give rise in us to pity, and in our pity is our humanity, our redemption.”

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