Robert Anderson Quotes

It's great that you can listen and be a shoulder to someone, but what about when someone doesn't need a shoulder? What if they need the arms or something like that? You can't just sit there and put everybody's lives ahead of yours and think that counts as love. You just can't. You have to do things.

Giving is the secret to a healthy life. Not necessarily money, but whatever a person has to give of encouragement, sympathy, and understanding.

People, although having their own cross to carry, can minister to others through their own pain.

All around you are people whose lives are filled with trouble and sorrow, and they need your compassion and encouragement.

But compassion isn't about solutions. It's about giving all the love that you've got.

When a friend needs consoling, do not give in to the temptation of telling stories similar to theirs of disaster or bereavement. It is something people often do to show empathy but nothing is more tiresome than other people's problems when you want to focus on your own. Listening is by far the best form of consolation.

Compassion is a verb.

To have compassion for those who suffer is a human quality which everyone should possess, especially those who have required comfort themselves in the past and have managed to find it in others.

We can give our smiles, our encouragement, our sympathy to someone who needs them every day of the year.

My first thoughts are that I should not let people down, that I should support them and love them.

Three-fourths of the people you will ever meet are hungering and thirsting for sympathy. Give it to them, and they will love you.

You were supposed to empathize with your friend's problem, but they were, after all, your friend's problems.

Like most men, my father is interested in action. And this is why he disappoints my mother when she tells him she doesn't feel well and he offers to take her to the doctor. He is focused on what he can do, whereas she wants sympathy.

Care for the living. I'll weep for the dead later. - Perrin Aybara

When you love people, you give them a priority. You have a sense of urgency about their pain.

There are those who are awkward in the face of sorrow, fearing to say the wrong thing; to them, I say, there is no wrong in comfort, ever. A kind word, a consoling arm ... these things are ever welcome.

I kept arguing that 'love is the most important force, love is the most important force.' So I wanted to show him loving. Sometimes it's dramatic: it means you lay down your life. But sometimes it means making sure someone's trunk is packed and hoping they'll be O.K. at school.

In the face of suffering, one has no right to turn away, not to see. In the face of injustice, one may not look the other way. When someone suffers, and it is not you, that person comes first. One's very suffering gives one priority. . . . To watch over one who grieves is a more urgent duty than to think of God.

Again and again, I learn how much friendship enriches my life, bringing warmth, assurance, humour, inspiration, a sense of security. It depends on honesty, trust, loyalty. It's about giving. It's for sharing the good times, but also the tough times, hurt, grief, sadness.

Men owe us what we imagine they will give us. We must forgive them this debt.

When someone you love is hurting, if it was possible, you'd want to take their pain for them. But do I really want cramps and sore boobs?

Kindness is the power that moves us to support and heal someone who offers nothing in return.

We have a responsibility to be aware of others.

Catherine had never wanted comfort more, and he [Henry] looked as if he was aware of it.

Every thought of pity is like the balm of Gilead to our souls.