Keats’ plea for tolerance, given we each have flaws that can be painfully exposed. See Theodore Dreiser’s similar suggestion that pity and compassion be given more room in a stony-hard universe. And George Eliot importunes us to lean towards tenderness rather than severity.
‘Men should bear with each other – there lives not a Man who may not be cut up, aye hashed to pieces on his weakest side.’
Source: John Keats, 23 January 1818, Selected Letters, ed. Robert Gittings (Oxford World Classics, 2002/2009), p. 51
Photo credit: whoismargot at pixabay.com
0 Comments