Litost is a nearly untranslatable Czech word, a state of feeling miserable and humiliated. “Litost is a state of torment created by the sudden sight of one’s own misery,” - The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera. Litost connects insult to revenge, with desire to strike back at the perceived source of one’s shame.
by B. McDoc August 14, 2005