Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless. There is no intelligence where there is no need of change.
H. G. WellsRead
It is when suffering finds a voice and sets our nerves quivering that this pity comes troubling us.
Interpretation
Pity arises from our empathy towards the suffering of others, especially when they express their pain.
This quote by H. G. Wells suggests that true feelings of pity are evoked when we witness suffering that is articulated. When someone voices their pain, it resonates deeply within us, stirring our empathy and compelling us to acknowledge their distress. This emotional response can be unsettling, as it confronts our own comfort in the face of discomfort and suffering.
In practice
During a charity event focused on mental health awareness, this quote could be used to highlight the importance of expressing our struggles.
Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless. There is no intelligence where there is no need of change.
He spares no resource in telling of his dead inventions... Bare verbs he rarely tolerates. He splits infinitives and fills them up with adverbial stuffing. He presses the passing colloquialism into his service. His vast paragraphis sweat and struggle; the
It [a new world order] needs only that the governments of Britain, the United States, France, Germany, and Russia should get together in order to set up an effective control of currency, credit, production, and distribution – that is to say, an effective ‘dictatorship of prosperity,’ for the whole world. The other sixty odd States would have to join in or accommodate themselves to the over-ruling decisions of these major Powers.
Things that would have made fame of a less clever man seemed tricks in his hands. It is a mistake to do things too easily.
But I was too restless to watch long; I'm too Occidental for a long vigil. I could work at a problem for years, but to wait inactive for twenty-four hours - that's another matter.
The greatest task of democracy, its ritual and feast - is choice.
When two texts, or two assertions, perhaps two ideas, are in contradiction, be ready to reconcile them rather than cancel one by the other; regard them as two different facets, or two successive stages, of the same reality, a reality convincingly human just because it is too complex.
The real fight is about what should be in the marketplace and what should not. Should education be a marketable commodity? Should healthcare?
For nothing is more democratic than logic; it is no respecter of persons and makes no distinction between crooked and straight noses.
I have become so accustomed to think "scientifically" that I am afraid even to imagine that there may be something else beyond the outer covering of life. I feel like a man condemned to death, whose companions have been hanged and who has already become reconciled to the thought that the same fate awaits him.
I am a man, and whatever concerns humanity is of interest to me.
Not knowing how he lost himself, or how he recovered himself, he may never feel certain of not losing himself again.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.