Quotes About Compassion

Think higher, feel deeper.

We must not see any person as an abstraction. Instead, we must see in every person a universe with its own secrets, with its own treasures, with its own sources of anguish, and with some measure of triumph.

It can be really exasperating to look back at your past. What's the matter with you? I want to ask her, my younger self, shaking her shoulder. If I did that, she would probably cry. Maybe I would cry, too. It would be like one of those Marguerite Duras books I tried to read in Svetlana's aunt's apartment. Elle pleure. Il pleure. Ils pleurent, tous les deux.

Definitely there are times when I'm tired and don't want to give up my seat on the bus to an old person. But I get depressed, not angry—like about how I'll be an old woman someday, and even more tired than I am now. I never think I deserve the seat more because I am reading a book." Worried this might sound self-righteous, I added, "Maybe it's just because I dont' read on the bus, it makes me carsick.

Just think," he said. "What would your mother say?" Tears welled to my eyes. My mother would be sorry for me.

linguist called Alla who advised us, among other things, to treat our more stupid students with sympathy, "as if they had cancer." While

I forgave him for a lot when he said that. I forgave him for almost everything.

That's a spiritual lifestyle, being willing to admit that you don't know everything and that you were wrong about some things. It's about making a list of all the people you've harmed, either emotionally or physically or financially, and going back and making amends. That's a spiritual lifestyle. It's not a fluffy ethereal concept.

I didn't care if he was a genius or a fucking idiot, he was rotting away, and it wasn't fun to watch.

Respect for the dead comes second to respect for the living, and I believe no man's demise exempts him from culpability.

We lived together for a long time,' he said, looking out of a crack-spangled window, 'we have no need to fight.' I bet he is dead now. He had the vulnerable purity and courage that would ensure he was among the first to get whacked on the front.

How often people come to us, children to parents, wives to husbands, friends to friends, trying to unload their burdens, and as we sit there listening, our minds and hearts are thousands of miles away. If we were completely present to each other, we would rightfully expect miracles to happen. To be completely present to others is to help them experience the personal love of God.

Truly tolerant people are hard to offend.

We need but three things to change the world: a brain, a heart, and a friend.

Sympathy is to love thy neighbor. Empathy is to leave her alone.

The gift of giving is to see the receiver give to someone else.

The professional must learn to be moved and touched emotionally, yet at the same time stand back objectively: I've seen a lot of damage done by tea and sympathy.

If while alive you hurt or disappoint people you love, there's no use continuing such behavior when you're dead.

There are those from religious backgrounds who resist and oppose LGBT equality; some very obsessively and publicly. They make bold accusations and negative statements about gay and lesbian people, their supposed "lifestyle" and relationships. But when a son, daughter, brother, sister or close friend comes out it is no longer an "issue" it becomes a person. They realise everything they'd said was painfully targeted at someone they love. Then......everything changes.

Pity . . . is more properly bestowed in cases of involuntary suffering than of crime and offences committed voluntarily and with malice aforethought.

We must not contradict, but instruct him that contradicts us; for a madman is not cured by another running mad also.

To all my friends without distinction I am ready to display my opulence: come one, come all; and whosoever likes to take a share is welcome to the wealth that lies within my soul.

And everyone wants to know: Who? Why? The victims ask the hardest of all the questions: How is it possible that the person I loved so much lit no spark of humanity in you?