Shared Pain Quotes

Often the most loving thing we can do when a friend is in pain is to share the pain-to be there even when we have nothing to offer except our presence and even when being there is painful to ourselves.

You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was Dostoevsky and Dickens who taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who ever had been alive. Only if we face these open wounds in ourselves can we understand them in other people.

I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the wounded person.

Suffering is only suffering if it’s done in silence, in solitude. Pain experienced in public, in view of loving millions, was no longer pain. It was communion.

When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand.

If I told you the whole story it would never end...What's happened to me has happened to a thousand woman.

All you who sleep tonight Far from the ones you love, No hand to left or right, An emptiness above-- Know that you aren't alone. The whole world shares your tears, Some for two nights or one, And some for all your years.

Can I see another's woe, and not be in sorrow too? Can I see another's grief, and not seek for kind relief?

Our stories are different; our pain is the same.

Pain doesn't have a face and pain doesn't have a certain way of adjusting. Pain is universal.

One pain is lessened by another's anguish.

Having someone to share not only the joy of life, but the pain of life... that's been sort of the biggest lesson of marriage. I can never get angry or upset with my partner because they're just a part of me.

It is always so, when we are unhappy we feel more strongly the unhappiness of others; our feeling is not shattered, but becomes concentrated.

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.

I hurt with you. I bled with you - not only because we're bonded but because of the love I have for you. -- Eric Northman

The essence of love and compassion is understanding, the ability to recognize the physical, material, and psychological suffering of others, to put ourselves "inside the skin" of the other. We "go inside" their body, feelings, and mental formations, and witness for ourselves their suffering. Shallow observation as an outsider is not enough to see their suffering. We must become one with the subject of our observation. When we are in contact with another's suffering, a feeling of compassion is born in us. Compassion means, literally, "to suffer with."

Suffering, if it is accepted together, borne together, is joy.

Who can take away suffering without entering it?

I know. I was there. I saw the great void in your soul, and you saw mine.

God weeps with us so that we may one day laugh with him.

...those who love suffer when who they love suffers.

I'm sorry. I can love you. I can grieve for you, or with you. I can share your pain. But I cannot judge you.

I've seen every one, from Motley Crue to John Denver, with tears running down my face. I had no idea everyone had such a hard time.

I cannot worry much about your sins and miseries when I have so many of my own. I can only love you all, poor fellow travellers, fellow sufferers. I do not want to add one least straw to the burden you already carry.

I have the satisfaction of knowing that it is all right; that everybody else is one way or other served in much the same way--either in a physical or metaphysical point of view, that is; and so the universal thump is passed round, and all hands should rub each other's shoulder-blades, and be content.