Terror and Pity

Stephen Dedalus said:

Pity is the feeling which arrests the mind in the presence of whatsoever is grave and constant in human sufferings and unites it with the human sufferer. Terror is the feeling which arrests the mind in the presence of whatsoever is grave and constant in human sufferings and unites it with the secret cause.

In: James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Wordsworth Editions, Hertfordshire, 2001, p. 158.

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