Alice Walker Quotes

If you have ever clothed another with woe, as with a garment of pain, you will never be quite as happy as though you had not done that thing.

Lincoln had internalized the pain of those around him-the wounded soldiers, the captured prisoners, the defeated Southerners. Little wonder that he was overwhelmed at times by a profound sadness that even his own resilient temperament could not dispel.

If you suffer and make your loved ones suffer, there is nothing that can justify your desire.

Having gone through what I went through, watching my family be torn to shreds and my children suffer immensely, I can't be the agent of doing that to someone else. I can't be the agent of causing someone to go to prison.

Some will not look on suffering because it creates responsibility.

Only through loving and supporting one another, even in the face of unbearable pain and suffering, will this cycle of violence end.

It is our duty never to speak ill of others, you know; least of all when we know that to do so will be the cause of much pain and trouble.

Almost without being aware of it, we end up being incapable of feeling compassion at the outcry of the poor, weeping for other people's pain, and feeling a need to help them, as though all this were someone else's responsibility and not our own.

Today it is considered as exaggeration to proclaim constant respect for every form of life as being the serious demand of a rational ethic. But the time is coming when people will be amazed that the human race existed so long before it recognized that thoughtless injury to life is incompatible with real ethics. Ethics is in its unqualified form extended responsibility to everything that has life.

Every single person has a story that will break your heart. And if you're paying attention, many people... have a story that will bring you to your knees. Nobody rides for free.

One does not really feel much grief at other people's sorrows; one tries, and puts on a melancholy face, thinking oneself brutal for not caring more; but one cannot and it is better, for if one grieved too deeply at other people's tears, life would be unendurable; and every man has sufficient sorrows of his own without taking to heart his neighbour's.

Because God is never cruel, there is a reason for all things. We must know the pain of loss; because if we never knew it, we would have no compassion for others, and we would become monsters of self-regard, creatures of unalloyed self-interest. The terrible pain of loss teaches humility to our prideful kind, has the power to soften uncaring hearts, to make a better person of a good one.

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

For a moment, my heart aches for him. I should never have asked him to join me here; I should never have asked him to cross.

I'm not really concerned about boundaries. I just follow my conscience and my heart. Follow your heart. That's what I do. Compassion is something I have a lot of, because I've been through a lot of pain in my life. Anybody who has suffered a lot of pain has a lot of compassion.

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

We . . . must try to live without causing unnecessary harm, not just to fellow humans but to all beings. We must try not to be stingy, or to exploit others. There will be enough pain in the world as it is.

Our first responsibility in all things is to preserve our goodness of heart - then and only then act.

Lack of understanding of the true nature of happiness, it seems to me, is the principal reason why people inflict sufferings on others. They think either that the other's pain may somehow be a cause of happiness for themselves or that their own happiness is more important, regardless of what pain it may cause. But this is shortsighted. No one truly benefits from causing harm to another sentient being. . . . . In the long run causing others misery and infringing their rights to peace and happiness result in anxiety, fear, and suspicion within oneself.

I feel a lot. I get really bad stomachaches all the time. So I went to a doctor, and he said, 'You're a feeler.' I take on people's pain a little too much.

In life and art, there are distinctions to be made between what an act of cruelty consists of.

A compassionate heart will lift you out of the pain and suffering of your own world because it knows that everyone is doing the best they can, given their state of consciousness and the histories they're dragging behind them.

One day I was sitting in my own pain, and suddenly all the pain and troubles of the world came to me. I received all the pain of the world, all through my body.

I've learned that intelligence alone doesn't mean a damn thing. It only leads to violence and pain.

If you and I are having a single thought of violence or hatred against anyone in the world at this moment, we are contributing to the wounding of the world.