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The difficulty we have in accepting responsibility for our behavior lies in the desire to avoid the pain of the consequences of that behavior.

Psychologically, it's always more pleasurable to blame others for our problems than it is to acknowledge our own responsibility.

There is the natural tendency that all of us are vulnerable to, to deny unpleasant realities and to look for any excuse to push them away and resolve to think about them another day long in the future.

People aren't inherently sympathetic.

Sympathy is charming, but it does not make up for pain.

It's easy when you've had difficulty or strife in your life to look at other people who seem like they've had it easier. But the thing we forget is that it is all relative, and each person's experience is uniquely their own, so that the worst thing they may be going through is truly the worst thing for them... it's just about having compassion.

It is in our faults and failings, not in our virtues, that we touch each other, and find sympathy. It is in our follies that we are one.

It is by a wise economy of nature that those who suffer without change, and whom no one can help, become uninteresting. Yet so it may happen that those who need sympathy the most often attract it the least.

We easily forgive our friends those faults that do no affect us ourselves.