Zadie Smith Quotes

To deaden yourself against any hurt is to deaden yourself also against the hurt of others.

It's a real primal thing, watching someone get hurt. It's funny and accessible.

I love trainwrecks on live TV.

In order to be cruel we have to close our hearts to the suffering of the other.

There is always something infinitely mean about other people's tragedies.

A man can gasp out his life beside you-and you feel none of it. Pity, Sympathy, sure-but you don't feel the pain. Your belly is whole and that's what counts. A half-yard away someone's world is snuffled out in roaring agony-and you feel nothing. That's the misery of the world.

It's easy to endure adversity -- if it happens to someone else.

To live without feeling or exciting sympathy, to be fortunate without adding to the felicity of others, or afflicted without tasting the balm of pity, is a state more gloomy than solitude; it is not retreat, but exclusion from mankind. Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures.

Oh, it is easy for the one who stands outside the prison-wall of pain to exhort and teach the one who suffers.

It is pleasant, when the sea runs high, to view from land the great distress of another.

I learn to pity woes so like my own.

I now have a greater compassion than I have ever had before to know what it is to have the pain of a broken marriage. And I'm not saying I have an answer or solution for everyone.

Nobody is going to feel sorry for me if I've lost a dollar or $100m.

It hurts to see anybody in pain, if you've got any kind of heart.

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?

Perhaps watching someone you love suffer can teach you even more than suffering yourself can.

What breaks my heart is suffering of any kind.

The soul of the truly benevolent man does not seem to reside much in his own body. Its life, to a great extent, is a mere reflex of the lives of others. It migrates into their bodies, and identifying its existence with their existence, finds its own happiness in increasing and prolonging their pleasures, in extinguishing or solacing their pains.

How quickly a person in pain whom you can't help becomes a reproach. And then, no doubt, a thorn.

I think my first big heartbreak made me more compassionate about other people's heartaches. It enabled me to feel more for others when they are in moments of pain.

Even to smile at the misfortunes of others is to do an injury.

Because Jesus Christ suffered greatly, He understands our suffering. He understands our grief. We experience hard things so that we too may have increased compassion and understanding for others.

Did you weep for the children who lost their dear loved ones and pray for the ones who don't know? Did you rejoice for the people who walked from the rubble, and sob for the ones left below?

You men have none of you any hearts.' 'If we have not hearts, we have eyes; and they give us torment enough.