Quotes About Compassion

The empathy we have is founded on the fact that God has put this person in my life. In other word, if this is true this allows me to be present to all kinds of people who I do not like.

Whoever has offended another with insults or harmful words or even a serious accusation must remember to right the wrong he has done at the earliest opportunity. The injured must remember to forgive without further bickering.

One of his Prayers of the Faithful was always "for those who are misunderstood.

Harboring enmity and seeking revenge only perpetuates the power of oppressors to lord it over their victims long after the deed was done. Thus, at the most fundamental level, forgiveness spells liberation for the victim

As we begin to acknowledge our own inner shadow, we become more tolerant of the shadow in others.

Evil can be opposed without being mirrored. Oppressors can be resisted without being emulated. Enemies can be neutralized without being destroyed.

Jesus abhors both passivity and violence as responses to evil.

There is no one, and surely no entire people, in whom the image of God has been utterly extinguished. Faith in God means believing that anyone can be transformed, regardless of the past. To write off whole groups of people as intrinsically racist and violent is to accept the very same premise that upholds racist and oppressive regimes.

The command to love our enemies reminds us that our first task towards oppressors is pastoral: to help them recover their humanity. Quite possibly the struggle, and the oppression that gave it rise, have dehumanised the oppressed as well, causing them to demonise their enemies. It is not enough to become politically free; we must also become human. Nonviolence presents a change for all parties to rise above their present condition and become more of what God created them to be.

Loving confrontation can free both the oppressed from docility and the oppressor from sin.

to see what had happened. "Oh no," Elaine gasped. "It looks like a car hit someone's buggy! I hope no one is seriously hurt.

I wish you would stop being so negative. I'm not being negative; I'm just facing the truth. The truth is you have a lot to learn about how God wants us to live, and unless you allow Him to fill your heart with joy and love, I'm afraid you'll be living less of a life than my crippled granddaughter.

I don't really know why I care so much. I just have something inside me that tells me that there is a problem, and I have got to do something about it. I think that is what I would call the God in me.

Whenever someone does you a wrong or speaks ill of you, remember that he is doing what he thinks is proper. He can't possibly be guided by what appears right to you, but only by what appears right to him. So if he sees things wrongly, he is the one who is hurt, because he is the one who has been deceived. . . . Starting from this reasoning, you will be mild toward whoever insults you. Say each time, "So it seemed to him." Epictetus, Enchiridion

Each patient ought to feel somewhat the better after the physician's visit, irrespective of the nature of the illness.

How can anybody hate nurses? Nobody hates nurses. The only time you hate a nurse is when they're giving you an enema.

What does the world need most . . . that we are uniquely able to provide? Shaich says he wrestled with that question for a while, then worked his way to an answer with the launch of Panera Cares—an initiative to open a number of pay-what-you-can cafés that are identical to the chain's other restaurants, except customers pay what they wish or can afford (based on suggested donation amounts).

If you're in the luckiest one per cent of humanity, you owe it to the rest of humanity to think about the other 99 per cent.

Throughout my life I have always been amazed that people couldn't listen to other people, that they couldn't hear their best intent, that there seemed to be an enormous need to demonize.

it is more accurate and compassionate to understand that both sexes were working to promote life—women risked death to create life; men risked death to protect life.

Truth without love is brutality, and love without truth is hypocrisy.

Humility is also a healing virtue; it will cicatrize a thousand wounds, which pride would keep forever open.

A mother is the truest friend we have . . .

A father may turn his back on his child, brothers and sisters may become inveterate enemies, husbands may desert their wives, wives their husbands. But a mother's love endures through all.