“The more we can be with our own difficulty, our own pain, the easier it is to be with the pain and difficulties of others.”

“Nothing begins, and nothing ends,
That is not paid with moan,
For we are born in other's pain,
And perish in our own.”

“If we only have love
We can reach those in pain
We can heal all our wounds
We can use our own names.”

“Our worst pain is confined within our own skin.”

“We fear violence less than our own feelings. Personal, private, solitary pain is more terrifying than what anyone else can inflict.”

“The sense of unhappiness is so much easier to convey than that of happiness. In misery we seem aware of our own existence, even though it may be in the form of a monstrous egotism: this pain of mine is individual, this nerve that winces belong to me and to no other. But happiness annihilates us: we lose our identity.”

“History is not just facts and events. History is also a pain in the heart and we repeat history until we are able to make another's pain in the heart our own.”

“History is not just facts and events. History is also a pain in the heart and we repeat history until we are able to make another’s pain in the heart our own.”

“If life becomes hard to bear we think of improvements. But the most important and effective improvement, in our own attitude, hardly occurs to us, and we can decide on this only with the utmost difficulty.”

“Grace is the absence of every thing that indicates pain or difficulty, or hesitation or incongruity.”