We cloak ourselves in cold indifference to the unnecessary suffering of others - even when we cause it.

It is only because the world looks on his talent with such a frightening indifference that the artist is compelled to make his talent important.

And I did work out something: that the rich of the earth indeed create misery, but they cannot bear to see it. They are weaklings and fools just like you. As long as they have enough to eat and can grease their floors with butter so that even the crumbs that fall from your table grow fat, they can't look with indifference on a man collapsing from hunger - although, of course, it must be in front of their house that he collapses.

To conquer, you must endure not just your own suffering but the suffering of others. Indifference is the ultimate evolutionary achievement, the highest rung on nature's ladder.

Humanitarian suffering and destruction could well exceed that of the 1998 offensive.

She ordered a cup of tea, which proved excessively bad, and this gave her a sense that she was suffering in a romantic cause.