Walt Whitman Quotes

I cannot worry much about your sins and miseries when I have so many of my own. I can only love you all, poor fellow travellers, fellow sufferers. I do not want to add one least straw to the burden you already carry.

When he is wounded, I bleed. {page 262 of John Adams}

That this is the source of our fellow-feeling for the misery of others, that it is by changing places in fancy with the sufferer, that we come either to conceive or to be affected by what he feels, may be demonstrated by many obvious observations, if it should not be thought sufficiently evident of itself. When we see a stroke aimed and just ready to fall upon the leg or arm of another person, we naturally shrink and draw back our own leg or our own arm; and when it does fall, we feel it in some measure, and are hurt by it as well as the sufferer.

Pity can be nearsighted and condescending; shared suffering can be dignifying and life-changing.

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

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.

Empathy is the faculty to resonate with the feelings of others. When we meet someone who is joyful, we smile. When we witness someone in pain, we suffer in resonance with his or her suffering.

Well, I was a big fan of the book and therein a huge fan of the girl Precious. And so I felt like I knew this girl. I felt like I'd grown up alongside her. I felt like she was in my family. She was my friend and she was like people I didn't want to be friends with.

We pity in others only the those evils which we ourselves have experienced.

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

When he is pierced, I bleed.

There is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one's own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels with someone, for someone, a pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echoes.

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

I used to believe that hurting would make you more alive to the hurting of others. I used to believe in feeling bad because somebody else did. Now I'm not so sure of either.

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

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

Empathy feels these thoughts; your hurt is in my heart, your loss is in my prayers, your sorrow is in my soul, and your tears are in my eyes.

Pity is the most pleasant feeling in those who have not much pride and have no prospect of great conquests; for them the easy prey - and that is what all who suffer are - is enchanting.

Character is revealed in the power to discern the suffering of other people when we ourselves are suffering; in the ability to detect the hunger of others when we are hungry; and in the power to reach out and extend compassion for the spiritual agony of others when we are in the midst of our own spiritual distress.

Love is to understand, at last, the suffering of another.

The delicate and infirm go for sympathy, not to the well and buoyant, but to those who have suffered like themselves.

But - I cannot make a choice. I have my own sorrow, but I suffer with him, too; I share his pain. I understand all - that is my trouble.

When your fear touches someone’s pain, it becomes pity, when your love touches someone’s pain, it become compassion.

Years ago I used to commiserate with all people who suffered. Now I commiserate only with those who suffer in ignorance, who do not understand the purpose and ultimate utility of pain