Elizabeth Bibesco Quotes

Above all things let us never forget that mankind constitutes one great brotherhood; all born to encounter suffering and sorrow, and therefore bound to sympathize with each other.

To each his suff'rings: all are men, / Condemn'd alike to groan, / The tender for another's pain; / Th' unfeeling for his own.

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.

Pity is the feeling which arrests the mind in the presence of whatesoever is grave and constant in human sufferings and unites it with the human sufferer.

We are all human beings, immigrant or non-immigrant. We all feel fear. We all love and become confused when we don't act as well as we would like to. We all get depressed and have feelings of uselessness. All of these things are true and have always been true.

I don't think we can be entirely happy seeing such misery around us.

Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant?

Whatever your supposed politics are - left, right - if you put it in a human connection, most people will rise to the occasion and feel the human pain in a way that they might not if it was presented in a more conceptual way.

Nobody understands another's sorrow, and nobody another's joy.

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.

People in misery is what most important in art.

There are those moments when you shake someone's hand, have a conversation with someone, and suddenly your all bound together because you share your humanity in one simple moment.

I'm very, very sensitive to pain and to people who suffer.

It's difficult to have any animosity towards someone if you recognize that on so many levels they're exactly the same as you.

I chose to present myself as one who comes from among the people, and I can be touched by their pain because I have my own.

It is by a wise economy of nature that those who suffer without change, and whom no one can help, become uninteresting. Yet so it may happen that those who need sympathy the most often attract it the least.

Pity addresses the perceived suffering, not the whole individual.

The unhappy derive comfort from the misfortunes of others.

Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind.

I am aware of the sufferings of women in India, which is also the suffering of women in many, many countries on our planet. My heart is filled with empathy and love for them.

Our sympathy is cold to the relation of distant misery.

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

Well, we ought to be stirred, even to tears, by society's ills.

The condition of the wounded touched my heart deeply.

We are truly to be pitied.