Sorrow is hard to bear, and doubt is slow to clear, Each sufferer says his say, his scheme of the weal and woe:... But God has a few of us whom he whispers in the ear; The rest may reason and welcome; 'tis we musicians know.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There is much pain that is quite noiseless; and vibrations that make human agonies are often a mere whisper in the roar of hurryin...g existence. There are glances of hatred that stab and raise no cry of murder; robberies that leave man or woman for ever beggared of peace and joy, yet kept secret by the sufferer--committed to no sound except that of low moans in the night, seen in no writing except that made on the face by the slow months of suppressed anguish and early morning tears. Many an inherited sorrow that has marred a life has been breathed into no human ear.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
To give money to a sufferer is only a come-off. It is only a postponement of the real payment, a bribe paid for silence, a credit ...system in which a paper promise to pay answers for the time instead of liquidation. We owe to man higher succors than food and fire. We owe to man.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A man with your experience in affairs must have seen cause to appreciate the futility of opposition to the moral sentiment. Howeve...r feeble the sufferer and however great the oppressor, it is in the nature of things that the blow should recoil upon the aggressor. For God is in the sentiment, and it cannot be withstood.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I prize the purity of his character as highly as I do that of hers. As a moral being, whatever it is morally wrong for her to do, ...it is morally wrong for him to do. The fallacious doctrine of male and female virtues has well nigh ruined all that is morally great and lovely in his character: he has been quite as deep a sufferer by it as woman, though mostly in different respects and by other processes.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There are confessable agonies, sufferings of which one can positively be proud. Of bereavement, of parting, of the sense of sin an...d the fear of death the poets have eloquently spoken. They command the world's sympathy. But there are also discreditable anguishes, no less excruciating than the others, but of which the sufferer dare not, cannot speak. The anguish of thwarted desire, for example.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
...I learned in the early part of my career that labor must bear the cross for others' sins, must be the vicarious sufferer for th...e wrongs that others do.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Pity is the feeling which arrests the mind in the presence of whatsoever is grave and constant in human sufferings and unites it w...ith the human sufferer. Terror is the feeling which arrests the mind in the presence of whatsoever is grave and constant in human sufferings and unites it with the secret cause.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Suffering is by no means a privilege, a sign of nobility, a reminder of God. Suffering is a fierce, bestial thing, commonplace, un...called for, natural as air. It is intangible; no one can grasp it or fight against it; it dwells in time--is the same thing as time; if it comes in fits and starts, that is only so as to leave the sufferer more defenseless during the moments that follow, those long moments when one relives the last bout of torture and waits for the next.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
As I rapidly made the mesmeric passes, amid ejaculations of "dead! dead!" absolutely bursting from the tongue and not from the lip...s of the sufferer, his whole frame at once ... crumbled--absolutely rotted away beneath my hands.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »