unavenged tears
I’m currently forcing myself to read the just-released torture memos. I can’t even bring myself to write about them yet.
I challenge you: let’s assume that you were called upon to build the edifice of human destiny so that men would finally be happy and would find peace and tranquility. If you knew that, in order to attain this, you would have to torture just one single creature, let’s say the little girl who beat her chest so desperately in the outhouse, and that on her unavenged tears you could build that edifice, would you agree to do it? Tell me, and don’t lie!
–Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov (trans. Andrew R. MacAndrew)