As A Negative Emotion
While pity is seeming to be a positive, helpful emotion, it is usually seen as derogatory and contemptuous. According to this view, it's based in conscious or unconscious consideration of the sufferer as inferior, therefore implying a lack of respect to the sufferer's humanity and dignity.
Read more about this topic: Pity
Famous quotes containing the words negative and/or emotion:
“For those parents from lower-class and minority communities ... [who] have had minimal experience in negotiating dominant, external institutions or have had negative and hostile contact with social service agencies, their initial approaches to the school are often overwhelming and difficult. Not only does the school feel like an alien environment with incomprehensible norms and structures, but the families often do not feel entitled to make demands or force disagreements.”
—Sara Lawrence Lightfoot (20th century)
“The best emotions to write out of are anger and fear or dread.... The least energizing emotion to write out of is admiration. It is very difficult to write out of because the basic feeling that goes with admiration is a passive contemplative mood.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)