You can empathize without sympathizing.

Friendship throws a greater lustre on prosperity, while it lightens adversity by sharing in its griefs and troubles.

Your friend mourns your losses with you, because they experience them too. The truth is, no matter how lonely you might feel, you're never going through anything alone....you can choose your family.

Jesus wept Voltaire smiled. From that divine tear and from that human smile is derived the grace of present civilization.

Your birthday is a special day, May it bring you love and cheer It gives a chance for me to say, Happy birthday every year

True compassion does not come from wanting to help out those less fortunate than ourselves but from realizing our kinship with all beings.

Love suffers far more for the pains of the beloved than for its own pains.

Suffering together builds togetherness, and if togetherness is more important for us and for our joy than freedom from suffering is, then God is good to allow this suffering.

And since perfected souls will be incapable of envy, all will rejoice in their lesser level of brightness, because it will be exactly what God wills for the common good; and all will identify with that common good as the fulfillment of their individual good, rather than a rival to it, as we fools do now.

We need encouragement, not sermonizing, and we need clear-eyed acknowledgement of the situation, not a sanctified gloss that pushes us toward saying, 'I see I must not admit my pain because, after all, I'm a Christian. I'll just have to cover it up.

I think 9/11 affected everybody in one way or another.

It's easier to get people to talk to you if you're a vet and you want to interview a vet about war. Sometimes they open up a little bit easier.