Why this?

The occasional piece of my own and a generous helping of others' creations I find inspiring. Site is named for a beloved book by one of my favorite writers, Italo Calvino, whose fanciful work lights--and delights--my soul.

Thursday, July 1, 2010

From The Unbearable Lightness of Being

p. 20
"... The secret strength of its etymology floods the word with another light and gives it a broader meaning: to have compassion (co-feeling) means not only to be able to live with the other's misfortune but also to feel with him any emotion—joy, anxiety, happiness, pain. This kind of compassion therefore signifies the maximal capacity of affective imagination, the art of emotional telepathy. In the hierarchy of sentiments, then, it is supreme."

p. 31
"There is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one's own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels w/ someone, for someone, a pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echoes."

--Milan Kundera

No comments:

Post a Comment