"We are strong enough to bear the misfortunes of others"
About this Quote
"We are strong enough to bear the misfortunes of others" skewers a complacent truth about human nature: suffering is light when it belongs to someone else. From the posture of spectator, pain looks manageable, even edifying. We dispense counsel, preach resilience, and congratulate ourselves on our composure not because we are virtuous, but because we are not wounded. Distance supplies a counterfeit strength.
La Rochefoucauld, a 17th-century French moralist hardened by court intrigues and the civil wars of the Fronde, made a career of exposing how self-love (amour-propre) disguises itself as virtue. His Maxims argue that our noblest gestures often hide calculation or vanity. Here, the appearance of fortitude masks a safer truth: it is easy to keep a steady face when the cost is borne by another. Pity can flatter the onlooker by letting one feel morally alive without paying much. Advice like "stay strong" or "everything happens for a reason" often protects the advisor from discomfort more than it relieves the sufferer.
The line also inverts a classical ideal. Stoic strength is admirable when it tames one’s own passions. Transferred to another’s calamity, the same calm can be indifference dressed up as wisdom. We praise ourselves for not being undone by tragedy that is not ours, then mistake that detachment for moral maturity.
Yet the aphorism is not nihilistic. It is a call to examine motives and to recognize the limits of empathy at a distance. True solidarity costs something: time, risk, money, reputation, the willingness to be inconvenienced or changed. To bear with someone is not to observe their misfortune without flinching; it is to shoulder part of the load until one’s own back feels the strain. The maxim pricks the bubble of easy compassion and urges humility. Before claiming strength, ask whether it is merely the comfort of safety. If so, the task is not to feel more strongly, but to come closer, where strength is tested.
La Rochefoucauld, a 17th-century French moralist hardened by court intrigues and the civil wars of the Fronde, made a career of exposing how self-love (amour-propre) disguises itself as virtue. His Maxims argue that our noblest gestures often hide calculation or vanity. Here, the appearance of fortitude masks a safer truth: it is easy to keep a steady face when the cost is borne by another. Pity can flatter the onlooker by letting one feel morally alive without paying much. Advice like "stay strong" or "everything happens for a reason" often protects the advisor from discomfort more than it relieves the sufferer.
The line also inverts a classical ideal. Stoic strength is admirable when it tames one’s own passions. Transferred to another’s calamity, the same calm can be indifference dressed up as wisdom. We praise ourselves for not being undone by tragedy that is not ours, then mistake that detachment for moral maturity.
Yet the aphorism is not nihilistic. It is a call to examine motives and to recognize the limits of empathy at a distance. True solidarity costs something: time, risk, money, reputation, the willingness to be inconvenienced or changed. To bear with someone is not to observe their misfortune without flinching; it is to shoulder part of the load until one’s own back feels the strain. The maxim pricks the bubble of easy compassion and urges humility. Before claiming strength, ask whether it is merely the comfort of safety. If so, the task is not to feel more strongly, but to come closer, where strength is tested.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
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