Rebecca Makkai Quotes

Verdiana was the child of poor though well-born parents, and her knowledge of the sufferings of the poor from her own experience in early years made her ever full of pity for those in need.

One does not ask of one who suffers: What is your country and what is your religion? One merely says: You suffer, that is enough for me...

Present unhappiness is selfish; past sorrow is compassionate.

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

The consideration and kindness shown by unfortunates to each other are surprising to those who have no experience with this class of men. Often to find real sympathy you must go to those who know what misery means.

If you want to live your whole life free from pain you must become either a god or else a corpse. Consider other men's troubles and that will comfort you.

Oh, it is easy for the one who stands outside the prison-wall of pain to exhort and teach the one who suffers.

I learn to pity woes so like my own.

Pity is best taught by fellowship in woe.

It hurts to see anybody in pain, if you've got any kind of heart.

When someone you love is hurting, if it was possible, you'd want to take their pain for them. But do I really want cramps and sore boobs?

Perhaps watching someone you love suffer can teach you even more than suffering yourself can.

What breaks my heart is suffering of any kind.

God's Heart is especially tender toward the downtrodden and the defeated. He knows your name and He has seen every tear you have shed.

Because Jesus Christ suffered greatly, He understands our suffering. He understands our grief. We experience hard things so that we too may have increased compassion and understanding for others.

There is mercy in every place. And mercy, encouraging thought gives even affliction a grace and reconciles man to his lot.

Our responding to life's unfairness with sympathy... may be the surest proof of all of God's reality.

I made your sorrow mine also, that you might have help in bearing it.

The key to the Grail is compassion, 'suffering with,' feeling another's sorrow as if it were your own. The one who finds the dynamo of compassion is the one who's found the Grail.

Did you weep for the children who lost their dear loved ones and pray for the ones who don't know? Did you rejoice for the people who walked from the rubble, and sob for the ones left below?

You men have none of you any hearts.' 'If we have not hearts, we have eyes; and they give us torment enough.

Compassion means full immersion in the condition of being human.

Not being untutored in suffering, I learn to pity those in affliction

It is by sympathy we enter into the concerns of others, that we are moved as they are moved, and are never suffered to be indifferent spectators of almost anything which men can do or suffer. For sympathy may be considered as a sort of substitution, by which we are put into the place of another man, and affected in many respects as he is affected.