Page:Three Thousand Selected Quotations from Brilliant Writers.djvu/582

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We often do more good by our sympathy than by our labors. A man may lose position, influence, wealth, and even health, and yet live on in comfort, if with resignation; but there is one thing without which life becomes a burden—that is human sympathy. —.

Certain it is, that as nothing can better do it; so there is nothing greater, for which God made our tongues, next to reciting His praises, than to minister comfort to a weary soul. —.

There is poetry and there is beauty in real sympathy; but there is more—there is action. The noblest and most powerful form of sympathy is not merely the responsive tear, the echoed sigh, the answering look; it is the embodiment of the sentiment in actual help. —.

Therefore, if you aspire to be a son of consolation,—if you would partake of the priestly gift of sympathy—if you would pour something beyond common-place consolation into a tempted heart—if you would pass through the daily intercourse of daily life with the delicate tact which never inflicts pain—if, to that most acute of human ailments, mental doubt, you are ever to give effectual succor, you must be content to pay the price of the costly education. Like Him, you must suffer—being tempted.