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Pity can purge us of hostility and arouse feelings of identification with the characters, but it can also be a consoling reassurance which leads us to believe that we have understood, and that, in pitying, we have even done something to right a wrong.

Richard Wright

I didn’t know I was really alive in this world until I felt things hard enough to kill for ’em.
RICHARD WRIGHT

Alive Ems Enough Felt Kill Life Until
Reading was like a drug, a dope. The novels created moods in which I lived for days.
RICHARD WRIGHT

Day Dope Drug Love Reading
We black and they white. They got things and we ain’t. They do things and we can’t. It’s just like livin’ in jail.
RICHARD WRIGHT

Black Country Jail Living People Thing White
You usually take it for granted and think you know us, but our history is far stranger than you suspect, and we are not what we seem.
RICHARD WRIGHT

City Grant History Pavement Seem Stranger Suspect Take Think
The spirit I had caught gave me insight into the suffering of others, made me gravitate toward those whose feelings were like my own, made me sit for hours while others told me of their lives, made me strangely tender and cruel, violent and peaceful.
RICHARD WRIGHT

Gratitude Hour Like Live Made Peacefully Spirit Suffer Tender Violent
I was taking a part of the South to transplant in alien soil, to see if it could grow differently, if it could drink of new and cool rains, bend in strange winds, respond to the warmth of other suns and, perhaps, to bloom
RICHARD WRIGHT

Bloom Differently Drink Perhaps South Strange Transplant Warm Wind
It hugs the easy way of damning those whom it cannot understand, of excluding those who look different, and it salves its conscience with a self-draped cloak of righteousness
RICHARD WRIGHT

Conscience Damm Drape Easy Hug Righteousness Salvie Self
They hate because they fear, and they fear because they feel that the deepest feelings of their lives are being assaulted and outraged.
RICHARD WRIGHT

Being Deepest Fear Feeling Hate Live Play
We had our own civilization in Africa before we were captured and carried off to this land.
RICHARD WRIGHT

Capture Carried Country Cultivation Iron Ivory Land Medicine Own
Kill them, turn back time to the moment before I had talked so that I could have another chance to save myself.
RICHARD WRIGHT

Another Back Before Talk Chance Kill Moment Myself Save Turn
In me was shaping a yearning for a kind of consciousness.
RICHARD WRIGHT

Consciousness Heart Kind Light Night Shape Yearning
Don’t leave inferences to be drawn when evidence can be presented.
RICHARD WRIGHT

Drawing Evidence Inference Interfere
Make up your mind, Snail! You are half inside your house, And halfway out!
RICHARD WRIGHT

Half Halfway House Inside Make Mind Small
We invented a medium of exchange, mined silver and gold, made pottery and cutlery, we fashioned tools and utensils of brass, bronze, ivory, quartz, and granite.
RICHARD WRIGHT

Brass Bronze exchange Fashion Granite Made Medium Silver Utensil
The holy and the evil, the high and the low, the white and the black; our America is frightened of fact, of history, of processes, of necessity.
RICHARD WRIGHT

Black Country Evil Fact Frightened High History Holy Necessity Process White
It made me love talk that sought answers to questions that could help nobody, that could only keep alive in me that enthralling sense of wonder and awe in the face of the drama of human feeling which is hidden by the external drama of life.
RICHARD WRIGHT

Answer Drama Feeling Help Human Love Made Nobody Question Sense Sought Wonder

Pity can purge us of hostility and arouse feelings of identification with the characters, but it can also be a consoling reassurance which leads us to believe that we have understood, and that, in pitying, we have even done something to right a wrong.

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Pity can purge us of hostility and arouse feelings of identification with the characters, but it can also be a consoling reassurance which leads us to believe that we have understood, and that, in pitying, we have even done something to right a wrong.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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