Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes

A dead grief is easier to bear than a live trouble.

My greatest affliction... is perhaps the major theme of my writings, the affliction of loneliness that follows me like a shadow, a very ponderous shadow too heavy to drag after me all of my days and nights.

He that would soothe sorrow must not argue on the vanity of the most deceitful hopes.

Before an affliction is digested, consolation ever comes too soon; and after it is digested, it comes too late.

There are some pains that run too deep for anything to absolve them. The best we can do is pick up the pieces and hope for the strength we need to keep going.

Dry your eyes O dry your eyes, For I was taught in Paradise To ease my breast of melodies.

Now that another is suffering pain at thy hand, trust not that thy heart shall be exempt from affliction.

When a man's eyes are sore his friends do not let him finger them, however much he wishes to, nor do they themselves touch the inflammation: But a man sunk in grief suffers every chance comer to stir and augment his affliction like a running sore; and by reason of the fingering and consequent irritation it hardens into a serious and intractable evil.

Explanations don't comfort. You won't feel better if you know why. It won't hurt any less.

I cannot tell how much my heart suffered for my people while at Leavenworth.

Grief is the price we pay for love.

Where grief is fresh, any attempt to divert it only irritates.

Grief is the agony of an instant; the indulgence of grief the blunder of a life.

I know some people that have gone through serious struggles. People that were close to me, and I've seen some terrible things about people who lose it. So I think that type of pain is something that's human and that, actually, can help us look at ourselves a little bit.

Sympathy is charming, but it does not make up for pain.

There's some things I can't write about, just terrible personal tragedies.

People who drink to drown their sorrow should be told that sorrow knows how to swim.

Grief changes shape, but it never ends.

I think loss of loved ones is the hardest blow in life.

Our own sorrows seem heavy enough, even when lifted by certain long-term joys. But watching others hurt is the breaker of most any heart.

Difficult as it is really to listen to someone in affliction, it is just as difficult for him to know that compassion is listening to him.

I must write you a line of deepest sympathy. I know how you must be suffering about Constance. We cannot disguise from ourselves that our old Constance has gone forever. I feel, whatever it may be in the future, for the moment she has passed out of the lives of her family. She has become an impersonal being, and no one will feel this so much as you.

People aren't very good at other people's pain.

I've had to walk through a lot of my tears.