‘At the bottom of the heart of every human being, from earliest infancy until the tomb, there is something that goes on indomitably expecting, in the teeth of all experience of crimes committed, suffered, and witnessed, that good and not evil will be don’t to him. It is this above all that is sacred in every human being.’
- Simone Weil, from “Human Personality”
'[…] philosophers often overlook precisely those features of our experience that could make it clear why and in what contexts the privacy of pain is important to us.'
'If we understand the experience of pain only as the having of a pain, we cannot understand how a person can be bewildered, fragmented, set adrift by the onset of pain for which no other experience in life prepared him.'
'We speak of a pain-language adequate to our ordinary needs. But there are occasions that test that language, as well as our understanding.'
- Karen Fiser, from “Privacy and Pain”