Strange how people who suffer together have stronger connections than those who are most content.

I am struck by how sharing our weakness and difficulties is more nourishing to others than sharing our qualities and successes.

People admire strength, but they connect over struggle.

Some sentiment other than love united these two beings, and inspired with mutual anxiety their movements and their thoughts. Misery is, perhaps, the most powerful of all ties.

All people believe their suffering is greater than others.

Connecting with others during difficult times makes the trials more bearable.

Someone from your social class who becomes poor affects you more than thousands of starving ones outside of it.

These two beings, who had loved each other so exclusively, and with so touching a love, and who had lived so long for each other, were now suffering beside one another and through one another; without speaking of it, without harsh feeling, and smiling all the while.

No matter how difficult our situation may be, there are always people who are suffering more.

Strange how it was always the spoiled who weakened and cried first, and it was the injured, the maimed, the blind, and the poor who fought on alone.

The ties that bind us are stronger than the occasional stresses that separate us.

People have a hard time letting go of their suffering. Out of a fear of the unknown, they prefer suffering that is familiar.

Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seem good to themselves than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest.

She found her fellow survivors, “energetic, intelligent, resilient, and very engaging. Meeting them felt like meeting missing or separated siblings. We all connected because we had all survived one form of torture or the other as a result of various forms of human trafficking.”