the confessions of st augustine

To Carthage I came. There I put my ear to the cauldron and heard from within and all around a song of unholy loves.
I did not love, but I loved the thought of love.
And in the depths of my desires, I detested the fact that I could not love more.
I looked for something to love in my love of loving.
I hated safety and wanted no path that did not have its snares.
The reason was that inside me there was a famine of inward food. I was starving for You, my God. This was not the sort of famine in which I realized my hunger. Indeed I lacked any longing for incorruptible sustenance, not because I had been filled with it, but because I was empty and loathed it. As a result, my soul became feeble and full of sores.
In misery my soul cast about, seeking sensual objects that could scratch where the pox itched. Yet there was no love to be found. None of these things had a soul, so they could not be objects of love.
To love then, and to be loved, was sweet to me. But when I found someone I love, I wanted only to possess and enjoy the body of the person I loved. I found a spring of friendship and polluted it with lascivious filth. I veiled the brightness of real love with a hell of foul, unseemly lust.
Outwardly my great vanity appeared refined and sophisticated. So I fell head first into the love that I had so wanted to be captured by.
My God, my Mercy, how much bitter root did You sprinkle on that sweetness? You were gracious to do it. I was loved and found a bond of joy; yet with that bond came chains of sorrow. I was beaten with red-hot irons of jealousy, suspicion, fear, anger, and quarreling.
The theater enchanted me with its images of my own miseries. Its plays added fuel to my fire. What makes someone want to be sad? Why behold doleful tragedies, vicariously experiencing what does not have to be suffered? Yet the spectator wants to feel sorrow at the stories, and this very anguish is pleasure. This seems to be wretched insanity. As more false emotion is elicited by what happens on stage, there is less freedom for one's own true feelings.
How odd that when one suffers personally, it is called "misery." When it is vicarious, it is styles as a sort of mercy. How is it compassion to feel made-up emotions about imaginary acts? The one who watches it is not called on to help relieve pain, but only to grieve. More applause is given to the actor who can elicit more grief. If the calamities depicted (whether historical or just made up) do not move the spectator to tears, he goes away disgusted and criticizing. If he is moved to passion, he watches intently and weeps for joy.
Do we really love to grieve? Certainly all want to have joy. No one wants to be miserable. So perhaps it is that we are pleased if we can act with merciful affection. Since mercy cannot exist without passion, we stir our passions for this reason alone. This desire for affection is the channel for friendship. But where do passions take that channel? Friendship plus passion runs into a molten, bubbling river of pitch. this virtue is transformed by our willfulness into hot waves of lust. Its affection should have the clarity of heaven, but it instead is corrupt when left to follow its own way.
So shall we avoid all feeling of compassion? Certainly not, nor is it wrong to take up a grief out of affection. But be careful of that temptation to impurity. O my soul, whose guardian is the exalted God of my fathers, beware of impurity.