John Ortberg Quotes

Compassion asks us to go where it hurts, to enter into the places of pain, to share in brokenness, fear, confusion, and anguish. Compassion challenges us to cry out with those in misery, to mourn with those who are lonely, to weep with those in tears. Compassion requires us to be weak with the weak, vulnerable with the vulnerable, and powerless with the powerless. Compassion means full immersion in the condition of being human.

To give and receive love, you have to be in touch with pain, you have to be capable of provoking it and feeling it.

When you truly know the meaning of the word love, you will also know the meaning of the word pain.

The difference between friendship and love is how much you can hurt each other.

The closer you are to people, the more you realise what has happened to them.

Baby, in a world without pity Do you think what I'm askin's too much I just want to feel you in my arms Share a little of that Human Touch.

Love is so painful, how could you ever wish it on anybody? And love is so essential, how could you ever stand in its way?

You hurt the ones you love the most. Because it hurts you the most.

At the end of the day, when it comes down to it, all we really want is to be close to somebody. So this thing where we all keep our distance and pretend not to care about each other, it's usually a load of bull. So we pick and choose who we want to remain close to, and once we've chosen those people, we tend to stick close by. No matter how much we hurt them. The people that are still with you at the end of the day, those are the ones worth keeping. And sure, sometimes close can be too close. But sometimes, that invasion of personal space, it can be exactly what you need.

When you love someone, you want to share everything with him or her. So it is your duty to say, "I suffer and I want you to know" - and he will, she will, appreciate it.

I-" said Nick, his voice halting. "I don't mind it as much when - when people touch me. Some people." Mae looked down, and Nick, who looked more relaxed when he'd been stabbed, slowly lifted his hand from his chest and laid it on the tumbled sheets between them, fingers half-curled into his palm. He was still regarding the ceiling with a fixed glare. "Because you trust them not to hurt you?" Mae asked tentatively. "No," Nick said, his voice harsh. "Because I'd let them hurt me.

Let's be the people who look at the hurting until we hurt with them. No hurrying past, turning away, or shifting of eyes. No pretending or glossing over. Let's look at the face until we see the person.

We are pain and what cures pain, both. We are the sweet cold water and the jar that pours. I want to hold you close like a lute, so that we can cry out with loving. Would you rather throw stones at a mirror? I am your mirror and here are the stones.

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

I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.

She's lonely and wounded and very vulnerable and it really is a story about people at the heart of it all.

I'm just saying, it's got to be about something more than just body parts when you're with somebody.

I'm a romantic, and we romantics are more sensitive to the way people feel. We love more, and we hurt more. When we're hurt, we hurt for a long time.

You know, I think anybody who has been in relationships has access to heartbreak - I don't think we have to go far to find it, whether we inflicted the heartbreak or whether we were the recipient of it.

The greater your capacity to love, the greater your capacity to feel the pain.

If fear is the great enemy of intimacy, love is its true friend.

Truth is everybody is going to hurt you: you just gotta find the ones worth suffering for.

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.

To act, you must know pain. You must know what it means to be in love, what it means to be rejected.

Love is always open arms. If you close your arms about love you will find that you are left holding only yourself.