You come down here to console me. That is charming of you. You find me consoled, and you are furious. How like a sympathetic person!
Similarly we are seldom sorry for those who need and crave our pity—we reserve this for those who, by other means, make us exercise the abstract function of pity.
I can sympathise with everything, except suffering. I cannot sympathise with that. It is too ugly, too horrible, too distressing. There is something terribly morbid in the modern sympathy with pain. One should sympathise with the colour, the beauty, the joy of life. The less said about life's sores the better.
Empathy can be an invaluable motivator, that truly connects the physician with their patient.