# Quote — Stefan Zweig, Beware of Pity

> It is not the healthy, the confident, the proud, the joyous, the happy, that one must love - they have no need of one's love! Arrogant and indifferent, they accept love only as homage that is theirs to command, as their due. The devotion of another is to them a mere embellishment, an ornament for the hair, a bracelet on the arm, not the whole meaning and bliss of their lives. Only those with whom life has dealt hardly, the wretched, the slighted, the uncertain, the unlovely, the humiliated, could really be helped by love. He who devotes his life to them atones to them for what life has taken from them. They alone know how to love and be loved as one should love - gratefully and humbly.

- Author: [Stefan Zweig](https://www.leafyquotes.com/stefan-zweig.md)
- Book: [Beware of Pity](https://www.leafyquotes.com/stefan-zweig/beware-of-pity.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Stefan_Zweig#Beware_of_Pity_(1939)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/stefan-zweig/beware-of-pity/it-is-not

## More from this book

> One can run away from anything but oneself.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/stefan-zweig/beware-of-pity/one-can-run.md)

> No envy is more mean than that of small-minded beings when they see a neighbor lifted, as though borne aloft by angels, out of the dull drudgery of their common existence; petty spirits are more ready to forgive a prince the most fabulous wealth than a fellow-sufferer beneath the same yoke the smallest degree of freedom.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/stefan-zweig/beware-of-pity/no-envy-is-more.md)

> The heart is able to bury deep and well what is urgently desires to forget.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/stefan-zweig/beware-of-pity/the-heart-is-able.md)