One day he heard a man lamenting and saying, "If only I were freed from this trouble, all my other troubles would be easy to bear." He replied: "Not so; for then those that are now light would be heavy."
Another person said to him: "Had this pain continued, I could not have borne it." Ottonieri answered: "On the contrary, habit would have made it more bearable."
Touching many things as to human nature, he held opinions not in accordance with those of the multitude, and often different from those of learned men. For instance, he thought it unwise to address a petition to any one when the person addressed is in a state of extraordinary hilarity. "And," he said, "when the petition is such that it cannot be granted at once, I consider occasions of joy and sorrow as equally inopportune to its success. For both sentiments make a man too selfish to trouble himself with the affairs of others. In sorrow our misfortune, in joy our good fortune, monopolises our mind, and erects, as it were, a barrier between us and matters external to ourselves. Both are also peculiarly unsuitable for exciting compassion: when sorrowful, we reserve all pity for ourselves; when joyful, we colour all things with our joy, and are inclined to regard the troubles and misfortunes of others as entirely imaginative, or else we refuse to think of them, as too discordant with the mind's present condition. The best time to ask a favour, or some beneficial promise for others, is when the person petitioned is in a state of quiet, happy good humour, unaccompanied by any excessive joyfulness; or better still, when under the influence of that keen but indefinite pleasure which results from a reverie of thought, and consists of a peaceful agitation of the spirit. At such times men are most open to pity and entreaty, and are often glad to please others, and give expression to the vague gratifying activity of their thoughts by some good action."
He also denied that an afflicted person ordinarily receives more pity from fellow-sufferers than from other people. For a man's companions in misfortune are always inclined to give their own troubles precedence over his, as being more serious and compassionable. And often, when a man in recounting his sufferings thinks he has excited the sympathy of his auditors, he is interrupted by one of them who expatiates in turn on his misfortunes, and ends by trying to show that he is the more afflicted of the two. He said that in such cases it generally happens as occurred to Achilles when Priam prostrated himself at his feet, with entreaties and lamentations. The tears of Priam excited the tears of Achilles, who began to groan and weep like the Trojan king. This he did, not from sympathy, but because of his own misfortunes, and the thoughts of his dead father and friend. "We compassionate others," he said, "when they suffer from evils we have experienced; but not so when we and they suffer simultaneously."
He said that from carelessness and thoughtlessness we do many cruel or wicked things, which very often have the appearance of genuine cruelty and maliciousness. For example, he mentioned the case of a man who spending his time away from home left his servants in a dwelling scarcely weather proof, not designedly, but simply from thoughtlessness or disregard of their comfort. He considered malice, inhumanity, and the like to be far less common among men than mere thoughtlessness, to which he attributed very many things called by harder names.
He once said that it were better to be completely ungrateful towards a benefactor than to make some trifling return for his great kindness. For in the latter case the benefactor must consider the obligation as cancelled, whatever may have been the motive that inspired the donor, and however small the return. He is thus despoiled of the bare satisfaction of gratitude, on which he probably reckoned; and yet he cannot regard himself as treated ungratefully, though he is so in reality.
I have heard the following saying attributed to him:—"We are inclined and accustomed to give our acquaintances credit for being able to discern our true merits, or what we imagine them to be, and to recognise the virtue of our words and actions. We also suppose that they ponder over these virtues and merits of ours, and never let them escape their memory. But, on the other hand, we do not discern similar qualities in them, or else are unwilling to acknowledge the fact."