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:
“Mothers often are too easily intimidated by their children’s negative reactions...When the child cries or is unhappy, the mother reads this as meaning that she is a failure. This is why it is so important for a mother to know...that the process of growing up involves by definition things that her child is not going to like. Her job is not to create a bed of roses, but to help him learn how to pick his way through the thorns.”
—Elaine Heffner (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)