Quotes About Compassion

THE GREATEST JOY IN LIFE IS HELPING OTHERS. SPLURGE ON IT!

One day a Japanese guard came into the 20-year-old Moitessier's cell intending to kill him. He raised his pistol, but they locked eyes until, inexplicably, the guard lowered the pistol and walked away. Now, years later, tenderized by solitude, Moitessier wished he had spared the rat.

Let me be to my sad self hereafter kind.

Anything we do to fight misery and ignorance and poverty, no matter how imperfect it may be, is still better than doing nothing at all.

Why are you unhappy? Because 99.9 percent of everything you do is for yourself—and there isn't one. —Wei Wu Wei

You can't let someone you love suffer an agony that gets worse every day and has no possibility of ever abating or ending, except in an even more drawn-out and painful death. Would

You can still talk with her," Iceland said. "It will take time. Everything you need to know is inside you, the same as it's inside her. You'll figure out how to talk to each other. You'll have to figure out how to listen, to understand." "I'm listening," I said. "I will.

You are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither high church nor low church, Catholic nor Protestant, citizen nor alien, capitalist nor communist, gay nor straight, beautiful nor ugly, East nor West, theist nor atheist, Israel nor Palestine, American nor Iraqi, married nor divorced, uptown nor downtown, terrorist nor freedom fighter, for all are made one in Christ Jesus.

Indeed the unpalatable truth may well be that we are the ones who oppress the type of people that Jesus spoke with—not directly with hatred in our hearts, but indirectly through the clothes we buy, the coffee we drink, the investments we make, and the cars that we drive. By reading these words in an affluent, Western setting we can so easily domesticate the words of Jesus to the extent that they become little more than advice on how to treat a shop assistant or a passerby.

The truth of faith is not articulated in offering reasons for suffering, but rather in drawing alongside those who suffer, standing with them, and standing up for them. This is pastoral care at its most luminous.

As Parker Palmer said, "Self-care is never a selfish act—it is simply good stewardship of the only gift I have, the gift I was put on earth to offer others. Anytime we can listen to true self and give it the care it requires, we do it not only for ourselves, but for the many others whose lives we touch.

Loving well is the goal of the Christian life.

who you are is more important than what you do. Why? Because the love of Jesus in you is the greatest gift you have to give to others. Who you are as a person — and specifically how well you love — will always have a larger and longer impact on those around you than what you do. Your

By failing to let others be themselves before God and move at their own pace, we inevitably project onto them our own discomfort with their choice to live life differently than we do.

Can we really love our neighbors well without loving ourselves?

the extent to which we love and respect ourselves is the extent to which we will be able to love and respect others.

God is just, merciful, good, wise, loving.

If you've opened your loving to God's love, you're helping people you don't know and have never seen.

Part of that likeness is to feel.

Lord Jesus, help me love well like you.

Why is it that so many Christians make such lousy human beings?

The degree to which you recognize and engage your own shadow is the degree to which you can free others to face theirs.

loving well is the essence of true spirituality.

It is always true to some extent that we make our images of God. It is even truer that our image of God makes us. Eventually we become like the God we image. One of the most beautiful fruits of knowing the God of Jesus is a compassionate attitude towards ourselves. . . . This is why Scripture attaches such importance to knowing God. Healing our image of God heals our image of ourselves.12