Jack Henry Abbott Quotes

Heaven help the man who kicks the man who has to crawl.

It's a rare and precious thing to be close to suffering because our society - in many ways - tells us that suffering is wrong. If it's our own suffering, we try to hide it or isolate ourselves. If others are suffering, we're taught to put them away somewhere so we don't have to see it.

There's something universal about illness... Whether you like it, at some level all patients are saying, 'Daddy, Mommy, help me, tell me it's going to be alright.'

I'm always attracted to the vulnerable character more than I am the superhero.

All cruelty springs from weakness.

You don't leave people who can't defend themselves.

I do feel that softness for the vulnerability and the innocence in our world, including my own.

We have to be aware of our fragilities as human beings - when we see cruelty, to understand that in certain conditions, we could be cruel, too.

No one alive is more tormented nor weaker than myself.

We're like everybody else. We hurt like everybody.

Pain? He could handle that, no problem; it was the idea that the female he loved was suffering that made him want to either punch something or vomit in the corner.

It is when suffering finds a voice and sets our nerves quivering that this pity comes troubling us.

The suffering of a loved one was in many ways worse than one's one suffering because it left one feeling so very helpless.

He who shall hurt the little wren Shall never be beloved by men.

There was a small boy on crutches. I do not know his name, and I suspect I never will. But I will never forget his face, his smile, his sorrow. He is one of the millions robbed of hope and dignity by charlatans discussed in this book. Wherever and whoever he is, I apologize to him for not having been able to protect him from such an experience. I humbly dedicate this book to him and to the many others who have suffered because the rest of us began caring too late.

Without your wounds where would your power be? It is your melancholy that makes your low voice tremble into the hearts of men and women. The very angels themselves cannot persuade the wretched and blundering children on earth as can one human being broken on the wheels of living. In Love’s service, only wounded soldiers can serve. Physician, draw back.

To be a human being is to suffer. But it's the unnecessary suffering, it's the suffering that we visit upon one another, that really should be stopped.

Never underestimate what it takes to watch someone you love in pain.

One spares old people just as one spares children.

I felt the kind of desperation, I think, that cancels the possibility of empathy...that makes you unkind.

Miserable men commiserate not themselves; bowelless unto others, and merciless unto their own bowels.

Compassion asks us to go where it hurts, to enter into the places of pain, to share in brokenness, fear, confusion, and anguish. Compassion challenges us to cry out with those in misery, to mourn with those who are lonely, to weep with those in tears. Compassion requires us to be weak with the weak, vulnerable with the vulnerable, and powerless with the powerless. Compassion means full immersion in the condition of being human.

Why was this heart of mine formed with so much sensibility! Or why not my fortune adapted to its impulses! Tenderness without a capacity of relieving only makes the man who feels it more wretched than the object which sues for assistance.

Before my eyes are many miserable scenes, the suffering of others and myself forces my hands to move. I become a machine for writing.

You ever want to feel powerless? Watch the people you care about being hurt and know there is nothing you can do about it.