In Shakespeare's plays, the mourner hastening to bury his friend is all the time colliding with the reveller hastening to his wine.

When you're grieving that's not the time to be brave or strong, you need to let it show

I honor my grief. I try to be kinder to myself. I give myself time to move through and to process whatever is making me sad.

I was standing in our dining-room thinking of nothing in particular, when a cablegram was put into my hand. It said, 'Susy was peacefully released today.' It is one of the mysteries of our nature that a man, all unprepared, can receive a thunder-stroke like that and live.

A man must not hold himself aloof from the things which his friends and community have at heart if he would be liked.

Becky cried, and Tom tried to think of some way of comforting her, but all his encouragements were grown threadbare with use, and sounded like sarcasms.

A surgeon in charge of my surgery rotation said that he knew who I was but that he was going to treat me as if I was normal. I sincerely thanked him and told him I would try to act that way.

I was in the kitchen drinking coffee when I heard Coretta cry, Martin, Martin, come quickly! I put down my cup and ran toward the living room. As I approached the front window Coretta pointed joyfully to a slowly moving bus: Darling, it's empty!

The deep pain that is felt at the death of every friendly soul arises from the feeling that there is in every individual something which is inexpressible, peculiar to him alone, and is, therefore, absolutely and irretrievably lost.

Almost all of our sorrows spring out of our relations with other people.

It is no longer sufficient to love others as himself and to do as much for them as he would do for himself; rather, a repugnance arises in him… towards the will-to-live, towards the core and essence of that world recognized as filled with misery.

People, he thought, were as hungry for a sight of joy as he had always been--for a moment's relief from that gray load of suffering which seemed so inexplicable and unnecessary. He had never been able to understand why men should be unhappy.