Oh, why does compassion weaken us?’It doesn’t, really … Somewhere where it all balances out – don’t the philosophers have a name for it, the perfect place, the place where the answers live? – if we could go there, you could see it doesn’t. It only looks, a little bit, like it does, from here, like an ant at the foot of an oak tree. He doesn’t have a clue that it’s a tree; it’s the beginning of the wall round the world, to him.
Robin McKinley, Spindle’s End