Amy Hempel Quotes

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

I don't think I ever sit there and think to kick a wound harder.

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

None knows the weight of another's burden.

There's no text that can replace a loving touch when someone we love is hurting.

What kind of man would I have been if I had not been there to help her? I felt along with her - not the physical pain, of course, but all her mental anguish. You can't be detached.

Those who have suffered understand suffering and therefore extend their hand.

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.

When you see a person you love being affected, suffering, people saying things that aren't true... then it hurts you.

You need someone there that gets what you're going through.

It would be good to rely on the man during my most tired moments. The best is if he will listen to my stories when I am stressed.

Though sympathy alone can't alter facts, it can help to make them more bearable.

Always say a kind word if you can, if only that it may come in, perhaps, with singular opportuneness, entering some mournful man's darkened room, like a beautiful firefly, whose happy circumvolutions he cannot but watch, forgetting his many troubles.

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.

There is always a comforting thought in time of trouble when it is not our trouble.

In all disappointments sympathy is a great balm.

How grateful are we--how touched a frank and generous heart is for a kind word extended to us in our pain! The pressure of a tender hand nerves a man for an operation, and cheers him for the dreadful interview with the surgeon.

Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.

When a person is down in the world, an ounce of help is better than a pound of preaching.

It makes me feel good to have some comforting effect on someone that needs comfort.

You don't want to diminish anybody's pain and suffering.

The kindness and affection from the public have carried me through some of the most difficult periods, and always your love and affection have eased the journey.

I could only try to comfort the women that I came face-to-face with. I was really moved by how much they wanted to talk, how much they needed to be comforted, and how happy they were that we were there.

When you are in trouble, people who call to sympathize are really looking for the particulars.

Compassion is a call, a demand of nature, to relieve the unhappy as hunger is a natural call for food.