A man strikes me with a sword, and inflicts a wound. Suppose,
instead of binding up the wound, I am showing it to everybody,
and, after it has been bound up, I am taking off the bandage
constantly and examining the depth of the wound, and making it
fester--is there a person in the world who would not call me a
fool? However, such a fool is he who, by dwelling upon little
injuries or insults, cause them to agitate and influence his
mind. How much better were it to put a bandage on the wound and
never look at it again!
(1315)
* * * * *
I once said to a woman who had suddenly lost her best friend
after years of the closest intimacy, without a quarrel or scene,
and for no apparent reason, “every time he thinks of you he will
be filled with remorse.” She replied, “Remorse? Not at all. He
is quite sure that all the fault lies on my side. In retrospect,
he has created imaginary grievance.” I indignantly protested,
ready even to pity her the more. She smilingly silenced me by
putting her finger on my lips, saying: “Do not pity me, I might
have had grievances, but I have none; in spite of everything,
mine is the better part.” And she was right.
Grievances are like a double-edged sword that wounds on one
side the heart it enters, on the other the heart that sends
it forth, and the most unhappy heart always holds the weapon,
for the point that pierces sinks into depths from whence it
is difficult to draw it from the wound. In reality everybody
is a victim to grievances; they that harbor as well as they
who create them, and for this reason frank explanations are
never resorted to. And the saddest thing of all is, that the
causes are often so slight and the suffering so great, as in
the case of the Neapolitan, who, having never read the works of
Tasso and Ariosto, fought seventeen duels on their respective
merits.--DORA MELEGARI, “Makers of Sorrow and Makers of
Joy.”
(1316)