Reflection for the Day

I developed a passion for stage plays, with the mirror they held up to my own miseries and the fuel they poured on my flame. How is it that a man wants to be made sad by the sight of tragic sufferings that he could not bear in his own person? Yet the spectator does want to feel sorrow, and it is actually the feeling of sorrow that he enjoys. For the more a man feels such sufferings in himself, the more he is moved by the sight of them on the stage.