Old age & callow youth

There are so many ways of being despicable it quite makes ones head spin. But the way to be really despicable is to be contemptuous of other peoples pain. You ought to have some apprehension that the man you see before you was once even younger than you are now & arrived at his present wretchedness by imperceptible degrees

Jacques, in Giovannis Room by James Baldwin

Now I am an old lady Im quite pleased to see I put that in my commonplace book when I was 25