I held my mother's hand, making sure she was comfortable before she settled in to rest. Then I went back to the hotel room and cried.

Making Compassionate Decisions: The Role of Empathy in Decision Making READING TIME: 19 MINUTES "The biggest deficit that we have in our society and in the world right now is an empathy deficit. We are in great need of people being able to stand in somebody else's shoes and see the world through their eyes.

People love to believe in danger, as long as it's you in harm's way, and them saying bless your heart.

This is why we have families.... So we never have to go a single day without worrying ourselves sick.

Maybe it's true what they say, that as long as you're nursing your own pain, whatever it is, you'll turn your back on others in the same boat. You'll want to believe the fix they're in is their own damn fault.

Principle of making what is important to the other person as important to you as the other person is to you.

I'm sure there are people who, even suddenly understanding the true situation, would have felt no more than a twinge of regret or vague guilt as they continued to sit in embarrassed silence beside the grieving, confused man. On the other hand, I am equally certain there are people who would have been far more sensitive in the first place, who may have recognized that a deeper problem existed and reached out to understand and help before I did.

There is no lonelier man in death, except the suicide, than that man who has lived many years with a good wife and then outlived her. If two people love each other there can be no happy end to it.

When someone we love suffers, we suffer with that person, and we would not have it otherwise, because the suffering and the love are one, just as it is with God's love for us.

Kindness-mere kindness-cannot tolerate suffering. Love can.

We do not want to lose our grief, because our grief is bound up with our love and we could not cease to mourn without being robbed of our affections.

Love is the overflow of joy in God that meets the needs of others.