Final Serenity

“After so long a life one quite loses the capacity to distinguish who has done what harm to whom. In the abstract conception of universal wrong, all concrete responsibility vanishes. The blackguard presents himself as victim of injustice; if only you knew, young man, what life is like. But those conspicuous midway through life by an exceptional kindness are usually drawing advances on such serenity. He who is not malign does not live serenely but with a peculiarly chaste hardness and intolerance. Lacking appropriate objects, his love can scarcely express itself except by hatred for the inappropriate, in which admittedly he comes to resemble what he hates. The bourgeois, however, is tolerant. His love of people as they are stems from his hatred of what they might be.”

Adorno, Theodor. [1951] 1974. Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life. NLB: London. [Translated by E. F. N. Jephcott. Excerpt from Aphorism 4, Final Serenity, p. 24. Newer translation by Dennis Redmond here (.pdf) and here (.html).]