Quotes About Compassion

Mom will not be happy if we wake her up. (She already got annoyed at me once today when I told her she was six minutes and forty-five seconds late picking me up at school. I didn't mean to make her feel bad. But I have a supercool timer on my watch, and if I'm not going to use it to tell her how late she is, then what am I going to use it for?)

Entonces empezó a llorar. No se si era por el dolor que sentía o por el dolor que acababa de provocar.

No, you're not. If you were really sorry, you wouldn't have done it. We do as we please, and then say we're sorry. But we're not sorry. We're just uncomfortable--watching other people in pain.

There once was a very great American surgeon named Halsted. He was married to a nurse. He loved her—immeasurably. One day Halsted noticed that his wife's hands were chapped and red when she came back from surgery. And so he invented rubber gloves. For her. It is one of the great love stories in medicine. The difference between inspired medicine and uninspired medicine is love. When I met Ana, I knew: I loved her to the point of invention.

Nothing disrupts dehumanization more quickly than inviting someone over, looking into their eyes, hearing their voice, and listening.

Then they went on to discuss other things because there is always something more to a person than what somebody else does to them.

We should lower the bar for what must happen in a person's life for their suffering to be acknowledged. "The current paradigm is encouraging all of us to think we are in abusive relationships," Hodes explained. "And if you are not in an abusive relationship, you don't deserve help. Being 'abused' is what makes you 'eligible.' But everyone deserves help when they reach out for it.

This is a sappy way to put it, but the Winthrop who warns Williams is the Winthrop I fell in love with, the Winthrop Cotton Mather celebrates for sharing his firewood with the needy, the Winthrop who scolds Thomas Dudley for overcharging the poor, the Winthrop of 'Christian Charity,' who called for 'enlargement toward others' and 'brotherly affection,' admonishing that 'if thy brother be in want and thou canst help him...if thou lovest God thou must help him.

I suspect that the day a person gives up on the Geneva Convention is the day a person gives up on the human race.

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.

it may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces.

After he finishes his song, I ask him, "Sir, were you just playing 'Lean on Me'?" "That's right!" he answers, thrilled. Now, whenever I think of Mudd and his house I hear that song, hear Mudd serenading the limping Booth, taking his arm and helping him up the stairs, singing, "Lean on me, when you're not strong, and I'll be your friend.

Abraham Lincoln had a soft spot for deserters, whom he called his "legs cases." Though many of his military commanders grumbled about Lincoln's leniency — traditionally, runaways were shot — the president preferred incarceration to execution, asking, "If Almighty God gives a man a cowardly pair of legs how can he help their running away with him?

United States . . . gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.

Winning is not always about shining the brightest. Sometimes it's about sharing the light with someone who has been waiting in the shadows all along.

If we are all going to have tragedies, if none of us can escape them, then surely we have to learn from them, we have to gain something. And we have to use what we have gained. Those of us who have fought tooth and nail to overcome tragedy are, after all, nothing else, proof that such things can be survived. So we can actually help others survive their tragedies too. As long as they'll let us.

It simply had never occurred to Annie during all her years of child-rearing that terrible things would not happen to her children just because she would not do terrible things to anyone else's.

Be truthful, gentle and fearless.

If I were in their place, I'd fall over myself.

Love thy neighbor as thyself because you are your neighbor. It is illusion that makes you think that your neighbor is someone other than yourself.

We must realize that violence is not confined to physical violence. Fear is violence, caste discrimination is violence, exploitation of others, however subtle, is violence, segregation is violence, thinking ill of others and condemning others are violence. In order to reduce individual acts of physical violence, we must work to eliminate violence at all levels, mental, verbal, personal, and social, including violence to animals, plants, and all other forms of life.

Whatever lessens suffering in yourself and others, that is right. Whatever increases suffering, that is wrong. The answer is within you. When you are free of pride and prejudice, when you are calm and attentive, a light will shine within you. Through meditation and through being mindful you will find your own knowledge of rightness. You will be your own light.

Someone, somewhere, needs to take courage to break the cycle of violence. Forgiveness is superior to justice. Being kind and compassionate to those who are good to you is easy. True forgiveness and compassion come only when one is able to forgive even those who have committed barbaric acts. If Angulimala is capable of renouncing violence, then tell me, your Majesty: is your civilized society also capable of being truly civilized and renouncing violence?

Whatever lessens suffering in yourself and others, that is right. Whatever increases suffering, that is wrong.