The world is a kind of spiritual kindergarten where millions of bewildered infants are trying to spell "God" with the wrong blocks.
Edwin Arlington RobinsonRead
Pity is like a knife, sometimes, and it may pierce one who employs it more shrewdly than the victim it would save.
Interpretation
Pity can often harm both the one who feels it and the one it is directed towards.
This quote by Edwin Arlington Robinson suggests that pity, while intended to be a compassionate response, can act like a sharp knife. It implies that in expressing pity, the person giving it can unintentionally cause more harm or reveal their own vulnerabilities, making them more affected by the emotions involved than the person they feel pity for.
In practice
In a conversation about compassion, I referenced the quote to illustrate the complexities of pity.
The world is a kind of spiritual kindergarten where millions of bewildered infants are trying to spell "God" with the wrong blocks.
The stillness of October gold_x000D_ _x000D_ Went out like beauty from a face.
And thus we all are nighing The truth we fear to know: Death will end our crying For friends that come and go.
A complete man should need no auxiliaries to his personal presence.
Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.
Make sure what you do is a product of your own conclusion.
When you become aware of silence, immediately there is that state of inner still alertness. You are present. You have stepped out of thousands of years of collective human conditioning.
I felt deep within me that the highest point a man can attain is not Knowledge or Virtue or Goodness or Victory but something even greater, more heroic and more despairing: Sacred Awe!
A point of view can be a dangerous luxury when substituted for insight and understanding.
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