" For Levi, the fault lay in part with Améry’s intransigence, his elevation of bitterness to an ethical imperative (for his part, Améry disparaged Levi as “the forgiver”). Favoring Levi’s suppositions is the vast clinical literature on the benefits of positive illusions and the deleterious psychological effects of “depressive realism. "

― Jean Améry , Charles Bovary, Country Doctor: A Portrait of a Simple Man