It depends on you!

One cold morning two young boys went to an elderly man whom everybody in the village held to be a sage and capable of perceiving what could be in the hearts of people.
“Good morning, my dear boys”, the old sage greeted them.
“We know”, they said to him, “that you’re capable of guessing and can even read our eyes. Can you tell who the two of us are?”
The elderly sage looked at them keenly and happily said: “you are brothers”.
“It is true”, they said. “Can you now tell where we have been this morning?”

The elderly sage said; “I think it’s not that difficult”. Then after a brief reflection the sage added; “You have been in the forest and you captured a dove”.
The young boys saw that the elderly sage seemed to know everything just as everybody in the village had always said.

Now, one of them showing open palms while the other had his closed, said to him; “You’re really a wise man!”

Then one of them continued and asked the sage; “Can you now tell us whether the dove is still alive or it’s already dead?”
The elderly sage paused for a moment and with a deep voice said to the boys: “whether it is alive or dead depends on you!” And the boy, expecting to hear more from the elderly sage asked; "why and what do you mean?"

The elderly sage said; “if I say it is dead, you’ll open your palms and the bird will fly away; at the same time, if I say it is alive, you’ll squeeze it between your palms thus killing it and then you’ll say it is dead. So either way, I’ll be wrong, and for that I say it depends on you!"

Sadistic Impulses

The sadistic im­pulses may be expressed merely in derogatory thoughts concerning the mistakes and shortcomings of others. But the impulse is to tell others how stupid, worthless and contemptible they are and to make them feel like dust; the impulse is to strike them with righteous indignation from the height of one's own infallibility. By being "holier than thou" the individual acquires the right to look down on others and thereby to inflict the same injury upon others as his parents inflicted upon him.
Nietzsche, in The Dawn of Day, has described this kind of moral superiority under the heading, "Refined Cruelty as Virtue":

Here we have a morality which is based entirely upon our thirst for distinction—do not therefore enter­tain too high an opinion of it! Indeed, we may well ask what kind of an impulse it is, and what is its funda­mental significance? It is sought, by our appearance, to grieve our neighbor, to arouse his envy, and to awaken his feelings of impotence and degradation; we endeavor to make him taste the bitterness of his fate by dropping a little of our honey on his tongue, and, while confer­ring this supposed benefit on him, looking sharply and triumphantly into his eyes.
"Behold such a man, now become humble, and per­fect in his humility and seek those for whom, through his humility, he has for a long time been preparing a torture; for you are sure to find them! Here is another man who shows mercy toward animals, and is admired for doing so—but there are certain people on whom he wishes to vent his cruelty by this very means. Look at that great artist the pleasure he enjoyed beforehand in conceiving the envy of the rivals he had outstripped, refused to let his powers lie dormant until he became a great man—how many bitter moments in the souls of other men has he asked for as payment for his own greatness! The nun's chastity: with what threatening eyes she looks into the faces of other women who live differently from her! What a vindictive joy shines in those eyes! The theme is short, and its variations, though they might well be innumerable, could not easily become tiresome—for it is still too paradoxical a novelty, and almost a painful one, to affirm that the morality of distinction is nothing, at bottom, but joy in refined cruelty." - (Adapted from Nietzsche's, in The Dawn of Day)