Don't condemn me, remember rather that sometimes I, too, can reach the bursting point.

Yet has not Man wept at the sounds? And are not his tears eloquent understanding?

A friend of mine characterizes leaders simply like this: Leaders don't inflict pain. They bear pain.

Having someone who understands is a great blessing for ourselves. Being someone who understands is a great blessing to others.

As the pain that can be told is but half a pain, so the pity that questions has little healing in its touch. What Lily craved was the darkness made by enfolding arms, the silence which is not solitude, but compassion holding its breath.

There's nothing grimmer than the tragedy that wears a comic mask.

Believe me, all of you, the best way to help the places we live in is to be glad we live there.

He took [the book] up, and found himself plunged in an atmosphere unlike any he had ever breathed in books; so warm, so rich, and yet so ineffably tender, that it gave a new and haunting beauty to the most elementary of human passions.

When happy, we possess something we love; when anxious, something we love is at risk; when despondent, something we love has been lost; when angry, something we love is being stolen or kept from us.

In our attempts to help, we can overinterpret suffering.

When you have once seen the glow of happiness on the face of a beloved person, you know that a man can have no vocation but to awaken that light on the faces surrounding him. In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.

Those who weep for the happy periods which they encounter in history acknowledge what they want not the alleviation but the silencing of misery.