“It is pleasant to be admitted into the birth-chamber of a great idea destined to be translated into action.”

Regarding the Pain of Others (2003), p. 101,
Context: Compassion is an unstable emotion. It needs to be translated into action, or it withers. The question is what to do with the feelings that have been aroused, the knowledge that has been communicated. People don't become inured to what they are shown — if that's the right way to describe what happens — because of the quantity of images dumped on them. It is passivity that dulls feeling.

§ 136
Source: Pali Canon, Sutta Pitaka, Khuddaka Nikaya (Minor Collection), (Suttas falling down)

"Computing a Theory of Everything" (2010)

Letter to The Advocate (21 October 2008)
2000s

Source: Sanitary Economy (1850), p. 15
Context: The sick chamber is the place where the most angelic virtues of the human race have ever been called into action. The meek patience of the sufferer—the endurance and the active benevolence of those who would not barter that sick room, with its gloom and silence, for all the glitter and the grandeur that human ambition displays beyond its walls—are among the finest objects that the philosophic eye can look on. So in every well-regulated household, each deathbed, if it carry with it the memory of broken ties and deserted seats at the social board, calls up also the recollection of duties fulfilled, of charities administered, of overflowing affection, ashamed to speak its strength, showing itself in strong deeds of unwearied assiduity.

Source: The Origin of German Tragic Drama

Talmud Bavli,Shabbat https://www.sefaria.org.il/Shabbat.25b.6?lang=bi&with=all&lang2=en|

As quoted in Saul Leiter (2008) by Agnès Sire
Context: I must admit that I am not a member of the ugly school. I have a great regard for certain notions of beauty even though to some it is an old fashioned idea. Some photographers think that by taking pictures of human misery, they are addressing a serious problem. I do not think that misery is more profound than happiness.