Viktor E. Frankl Quotes

It's easy when you have suffered to feel the link with what others have gone through.

I haven't been in the military, but I've known my share of pain. It allows me to sit with someone who's struggling and not be afraid.

If you've been there, no explanation is necessary. If you haven't, none is adequate.

I could only try to comfort the women that I came face-to-face with. I was really moved by how much they wanted to talk, how much they needed to be comforted, and how happy they were that we were there.

Empathy is the faculty to resonate with the feelings of others. When we meet someone who is joyful, we smile. When we witness someone in pain, we suffer in resonance with his or her suffering.

Let us make a special effort to stop communicating with each other, so we can have some conversation.

He who does not understand your silence will probably not understand your words.

Anyone who has experienced a certain amount of loss in their life has empathy for those who have experienced loss.

No one feels another's grief, no one understands another's joy. People imagine they can reach one another. In reality they only pass each other by.

One thing that I would like to get across is that even the most horrible events do have explanations that we can understand. And it's not always comfortable for us to understand, because in order to understand, we have to see how we're not so far away from the people in question.

It's true that misunderstanding and lack of understanding are often themes in my fiction, but I am grateful for the moments when true understanding is achieved, especially between writer and reader. It's miraculous.

You want to talk to someone; first open your ears.

It's an honest place to be if you don't understand someone else's experience, but there's no way for the other to understand if a conversation or an explanation isn't made.

I've had to guess at her, sewing her skin together as I sew mine, though with a different stitch

We look into each other's eyes as we shake. His are still full of death and horror, but in them I see my face reflected, and inside my tiny eyes inside his, I think I see some hope.

Knowing pain is a very important ingredient of being there for another person.

My type of humor is almost pure identification. A housewife reads my column and says, 'But that's happened to ME! I know just what she's talking about!

The wounded recognized the wounded.

If you are able to explain suffering, a man once told him, you weren't really there.

The voice of life in me cannot reach the ear of life in you; but let us talk that we may not feel lonely.

People give themselves to you, in their talking, and in other ways, if you are quiet and patient and let them, and not in such a damned rush to give yourself to them you go bat-blind and deaf.

I think when you've gone through a betrayal in life then when somebody's been betrayed you can talk to the person about it. If your husband's been unfaithful to you, you know what that's like, you know how that feels. You can share true empathy with someone.

I love your silences, they are like mine.

I think my first big heartbreak made me more compassionate about other people's heartaches. It enabled me to feel more for others when they are in moments of pain.

The whole problem of life, then, is this: how to break out of one's own loneliness, how to communicate with others.