Comforting Others Quotes

One pain is lessened by another's anguish.

When my wife passed, I stopped doing interviews and I stopped doing meet-and-greets, mostly because I sort of became this suicide ambassador. Everybody wanted to tell me their story.

When one has lost a friend one's eyes should be neither dry nor streaming. Tears, yes, there should be, but not lamentation.

I think it's okay to talk about grief and sorrow. Especially for women, when you lose a child or have a miscarriage, it's good to talk about it, as a lot of people don't want you to speak about those things. It makes people sad, but sometimes you've got to.

... be indulgent toward those who ... are afraid of the aloneness that you trust.

How can the mind be so imperfect?" she says with a smile. I look at my hands. Bathed in the moonlight, they seem like statues, proportioned to no purpose. "It may well be imperfect," I say, "but it leaves traces. And we can follow those traces, like footsteps in the snow." "Where do the lead?" "To oneself," I answer. "That's where the mind is. Without the mind, nothing leads anywhere." I look up. The winter moon is brilliant, over the Town, above the Wall. "Not one thing is your fault," I comfort her.

When the suffering of another creature causes you to feel pain, do not submit to the initial desire to flee from the suffering one, but on the contrary, come closer, as close as you can to her who suffers, and try to help her.

People have said, 'Don't cry' to other people for years and years, and all it has ever meant is, 'I'm too uncomfortable when you show your feelings. Don't cry.' I'd rather have them say, 'Go ahead and cry. I'm here to be with you.'

I do not know of a better cure for sorrow than to pity somebody else.

I started out performing as a little boy, I was trying to make my mother feel better and laugh because she was sick and in pain all the time. I found out that I had that power to relieve her.

When a friend needs consoling, do not give in to the temptation of telling stories similar to theirs of disaster or bereavement. It is something people often do to show empathy but nothing is more tiresome than other people's problems when you want to focus on your own. Listening is by far the best form of consolation.

It's almost embarrassing to be out in public and someone comes up to you and says, 'My mother had the same thing you did.' What do you say? I don't know what to say to make them feel better about their situation.

A lot of times, people are ashamed of feeling weak and being rejected - so it's liberating to be able to sing about those things. And it's amazing when other people don't feel alone because they hear it.

In all cases of heart-ache, the application of another man's disappointment draws out the pain and allays the irritation.

Every hand and every hour should be devoted to rescue the world from its insanity of guilt, and to assuage the pangs of human hearts with balm and anodyne. To pity distress is but human; to relieve it is Godlike.

I always thought it was great to be able to make people feel better. It was a little like being God.

I would go to the deeps a hundred times to cheer a downcast spirit. It is good for me to have been afflicted, that I might know how to speak a word in season to one that is weary.

I wanted to say something to cheer her up. I had a feeling that cheering her up might be a lot of work. I was thinking of how sometimes, trying to say the right thing to people, it’s like some kind of brain surgery, and you have to tweak exactly the right part of the lobe. Except with talking, it’s more like brain surgery with old, rusted skewers and things, maybe like those things you use to eat lobster, but brown. And you have to get exactly the right place, and you’re touching around in the brain but the patient, she keeps jumping and saying, “Ow.

The display of grief makes more demands than grief itself. How few men are sad in their own company.

People, although having their own cross to carry, can minister to others through their own pain.

There's no easy way to do this. So do it right: weep, laugh, watch, pray, love, live, give thanks and praise; comfort, mend, honor, and remember.

I think it's very important to cry in the shower and not in front of them. They need to know that everything's going to be all right, even when you're not sure it is.

I learned that, with grief, you have to take it one day at a time and learn how to find the happiness amid the heartbreak.

The only way to solace anyone who loved you in life is to be a good memory

Life is not to be expended in vain regrets. No day, no hour, comes but brings in its train work to be performed for some useful end - the suffering to be comforted, the wandering led home, the sinner reclaimed. Oh! How can any fold the hands to rest and say to the spirit, 'Take thine ease, for all is well!'