Edwin Arlington Robinson Quotes

The world is quickly bored by the recital of misfortune, and willing avoids the sight of distress.

Worse than idle is compassion if it ends in tears and sighs.

Sympathy can be addictive and can kill strong men as surely as a diet of nothing but sugar.

How much good do you suppose condescending charity does?

Human misery is so appalling nowadays that if we allowed ourselves to dwell on it we should only add imaginary miseries of our own to the real miseries of others without doing them any good.

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.

What is pity but the vice of kindness.

I think there's some evidence that when it comes to being a doctor or nurse, a police officer or therapist, that empathetic engagement leads to burn-out. Imagine if you're dealing with severely ill children, and you felt their pain all the time, and the pain of their parents - you wouldn't be able to do that job for very long. It would kill you.

We've got to be kind.

Regrettably, the media are seemingly incapable of mentioning the words 'compassion' and 'Trump' in the same sentence.

If I'm chatting to someone who's an anxious wreck and I don't understand it, because I've never been anxious, then it's strange. There's no real way of talking to them about it without saying, 'I've no idea what you're talking about. I'm better than you.'

Fraternity and compassion are written into nature's DNA.

People have goodness in their hearts.

People are kind of used to me shooting.

Most people have the ability to turn their empathy engine back on, but there's such a seductive burn to not being empathetic.

I don't like to think about others losing or not performing well. No, no - I'm not that kind of person.

Then cherish pity, lest you drive an angel from your door.

Pity is not enough better than indifference to benefit materially either agent or recipient.

Seeing other people in pain causes me pain.

Kindness begets kindness evermore.

My students tell me, we don't want to love! We're tired of being loving! And I say to them, if you're tired of being loving, then you haven't really been loving, because when you are loving you have more strength.

I'm trying to feel sorry for you, really I am,"North said."If you wait just a moment I'm sure the tears will come.

Pity, though it may often relieve, is but, at best, a short-lived passion, and seldom affords distress more than transitory assistance; with some it scarce lasts from the first impulse till the hand can be put into the pocket.

I see compassion may become a justice, though it be a weakness, I confess, and nearer a vice than a virtue.

Andrew hated to see her humiliated and pathetic like this; but he half hated her too for landing herself in it, when any idiot could have seen.