What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult for each other?

She tried to understand what it meant to carry winter on your back, to hesitate over every step, to confuse words you don't hear properly, to have the impression that the rest of the world is going about in a great rush; the emptiness, frailty, fatigue, and indifference toward everything not directly related to you, even children and grandchildren, whose absence was not felt as it once had been, and whose names you had to struggle to remember.

Shared pain is more bearable.

In Chile it is bad manners to acknowledge that you're overly satisfied, because that can irritate the less fortunate, which is why for us the correct answer to the question "How are you?" is "So-so." That is an opening for sympathizing with the other speaker's situation.

My maternal aunts and uncles, the Barros, were twelve rather eccentric brothers and sisters, though none was hopelessly mad.

They're really good people. Quakers are always to be found where they're most needed.

It is not yours to finish the task, but neither are you free to take no part in it.

The bee is more honored than other animals, not because she labors, but because she labors for others.

If you think about what you ought to do for other people, your character will take care of itself.

The life of a conscientious clergyman is not easy. I have always considered a clergyman as the father of a larger family than he is able to maintain. I would rather have chancery suits upon my hands than the cure of souls.

Commerce links all mankind in one common brotherhood of mutual dependence and interests.

Keep trying. Take care of the small circle around you. When you have succeeded with them, then move outwards, one small step at a time.