Almost everybody is deeply affected when some one he loves suffers from cancer. Most people are moved when they see the sufferings of unknown patients in hospitals. Yet when they read that the death-rate from cancer is such-and-such, they are as a rule only moved to momentary personal fear lest they or some one dear to them should acquire the disease. The same is true of war: people think it dreadful when their son or brother is mutilated, but they do not think it a million times as dreadful that a million people should be mutilated. A man who is full of kindliness in all personal dealings may derive his income from incitement to war or from the torture of children in “backward” countries.
All these familiar phenomena are due to the fact that sympathy is not stirred, in most people, by a merely abstract stimulus. A large proportion of the evils in the modern world would cease if this could be remedied.Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) English mathematician and philosopher
Education and the Good Life, Part 1, ch. 2 “The Aims of Education” (1926)
(Source)
Quotations about:
loved ones
Note not all quotations have been tagged, so Search may find additional quotes on this topic.
CHORUS: The fiercest anger of all, the most incurable
is that which rages in the place of dearest love.[ΚΥΚΛΩΨ: Δεινή τις ὀργὴ καὶ δυσίατος πέλει,
ὅταν φίλοι φίλοισι συμβάλωσ᾽ ἔριν.]Euripides (485?-406? BC) Greek tragic dramatist
Medea [Μήδεια], l. 520ff (431 BC) [tr. Vellacott (1963)]
(Source)
Of the estrangement Jason and Medea. Some translations say this line is given by the chorus leader, not the chorus as a whole.
(Source (Greek)). Other translations:How sharp their wrath, how hard to be appeas'd
When friends with friends begin the cruel strife.
[tr. Wodhull (1782)]When friends with friends at variance kindle strife,
Fierce is their anger and immedicable.
[tr. Potter (1814)]Terrible is that anger, and to assuage
Most difficult, when friends with friends join battle.
[tr. Webster (1868)]There is a something terrible and past all cure, when quarrels arise 'twixt those who are near and dear.
[tr. Coleridge (1891)]Dreadful is that anger and irremediable, when friends with friends kindle strife.
[tr. Buckley (1892)]Awful is wrath, and past all balm of healing,
When they that once loved clash in feud of hate.
[tr. Way (Loeb) (1894)]Dire and beyond all healing is the hate
When hearts that loved are turned to enmity.
[tr. Murray (1906)]It is a strange form of anger, difficult to cure, when two friends turn upon each other in hatred.
[tr. Warner (1944)]A terrible thing is temper and knows no cure
When dear ones wrangle and fall to fighting each other.
[tr. Podlecki (1989)]Terrible and hard to heal is the wrath that comes when kin join in conflict with kin.
[tr. Kovacs (Loeb) (1994)]Terrible is the anger and almost beyond cure, when strife severs those whom love once joined.
[tr. Davie (1996)]Friend against friend! An anger most implacable!
[tr. Theodoridis (2004)]Anger is frightening and hard to remedy
when loved ones join in strife with loved ones.
[tr. Luschnig (2007)]When members of a family fight like this,
rage pushes them beyond all compromise.
[tr. Johnston (2008)]It is a deinē anger and past all cure, whenever philoi fall to strife [eris] with philoi.
[tr. Coleridge / Ceragioli / Nagy / Hour25]
