“ We become afraid that we ourselves might be as the leper or as the blind, and that no man would have care of us. ”
Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism (1891). copy citation
| Author | Oscar Wilde |
|---|---|
| Source | The Soul of Man under Socialism |
| Topic | care |
| Date | 1891 |
| Language | English |
| Reference | |
| Note | |
| Weblink | http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1017/1017-0.txt |
Context
“He has merely sympathy with pain, and sympathy with pain is not the highest form of sympathy. All sympathy is fine, but sympathy with suffering is the least fine mode. It is tainted with egotism. It is apt to become morbid. There is in it a certain element of terror for our own safety. We become afraid that we ourselves might be as the leper or as the blind, and that no man would have care of us. It is curiously limiting, too. One should sympathise with p. 83the entirety of life, not with life’s sores and maladies merely, but with life’s joy and beauty and energy and health and freedom. The wider sympathy is, of course, the more difficult.”
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