Rainer Maria Rilke Quotes

I know the compassion of others is a relief at first. I don't despise it. But it can't quench pain, it slips through your soul as through a sieve. And when our suffering has been dragged from one pity to another, as from one mouth to another, we can no longer respect or love it.

I have a lot of compassion for human beings in life experiences, so I allow myself to feel what these characters are feeling and don't have a problem accepting that.

A prerequisite to empathy is simply paying attention to the person in pain.

When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand.

We may thank God that we can feel pain and know sadness, for these are the human sentiments that constitute our glory as well as our grief.

The thing that inspires me most is empathizing with people's flaws and seeing how they deal with them. That sort of connection you feel with someone when you realize that maybe even the negative things that they've said or done are because of insecurities or injuries they've endured.

There's no way to know exactly what someone's dealing with, no matter how open you are. You're just never going to know everything.

I realized that a great deal of life is exactly and precisely about being able to feel pain: my own and other people's.

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

I fervently wish no misery ever came near anyone; yet it is that alone that gives us an insight into the depths of our lives, does it not? In our moments of anguish, gates barred forever seem to open and let in many a flood of light.

Said one oyster to a neighboring oyster, "I have a very great pain within me. It is heavy and round and I am in distress." And the other oyster replied with haughty complacence, "Praise be to the heavens and to the sea, I have no pain within me. I am well and whole both within and without." At that moment a crab was passing by and heard the two oysters, and he said to the one who was well and whole both within and without, "Yes, you are well and whole; but the pain that your neighbor bears is a pearl of exceeding beauty."

The world doesn't grieve when you're grieving. The world goes on about its business. You're having a good day and I'm having a bad one and vice versa. And they could be very good and very bad at the same time. You multiply that by seven billion and you have one element of human experience.

Consider it: every person you have ever met, every person will suffer the loss of his friends and family. All are going to lose everything they love in this world. Why would one want to be anything but kind to them in the meantime?

I think most people who decide to become a musician have to be prepared for some degree of struggle. It makes the art better if you go through some struggles. To be an artist, in any form, you have to develop some sense of compassion and empathy - it's an important quality for everyone to have, on a human level. But I think, as part of our job, you have to be able to do that, so suffering, tends - if you allow it - to let you look on the bright side. It will help with those senses.

It is an easy thing for one whose foot is on the outside of calamity to give advice and to rebuke the sufferer.

I think we all have empathy. We may not have enough courage to display it.

No deep and strong feeling, such as we may come across here and there in the world, is unmixed with compassion. The more we love, the more the object of our love seems to us to be a victim.

Rejoicing in our joy, not suffering over our suffering, makes someone a friend.

If we could read the secret history of our enemies we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.

None knows the weight of another's burden.

All you'd have to do is get a sad look, and he'd try to do something for you.

Ever since I was a child, I would start crying seeing anyone in pain.

Only when the sense of the pain of others begins does man begin.

I'm not looking for sympathy at all.

The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing... not healing, not curing... that is a friend who cares.