Quotes About Compassion

Jim Crace's Quarantine [1997] and Norman Mailer's The Gospel According to the Son [1997].

They who say that we should love our fellow-citizens but not foreigners, destroy the universal brotherhood of mankind, with which benevolence and justice would perish forever

Il y a encore de certains devoirs à remplir envers même de qui nous avons reçu une injure; car la vengeance et la punition ont aussi leurs bornes. Je ne sais même si repentir de celui qui a fait l'injure ne suffirait pas et pour l'empêcher d'en faire une semblable à l'avenir et pour retenir les autres dans le devoir.

So let this be the first and sacred law of friendship: seek only the good from friends, do only good for the sake of friends - and don't wait to be asked! Be always attentive! Banish hesitation! Be ready to give advice freely! Take seriously the good advice of friends. Be ready to offer it openly, even forcefully, if the occasion demands - and also be ready to follow when it's been offered.

Mine is the disaster, if disaster there be; and to be severely distressed at one's own misfortunes does not show that you love your friend, but that you love yourself.

Non nobis solum nati sumus.

It is the function of justice not to do wrong to one's fellow-men; of considerateness , not to wound their feelings; and in this the essence of propriety is best seen.

Optime autem societas hominum conjunctioque servabitur, si, ut quisque erit conjunctissimus, ita in eum benignitatis plurimum conferetur. (...) Homo, qui erranti comiter monstrat viam, Quasi lumen de suo lumine accendat, facit Nihilo minus ipsi lucet, cum illi accenderit.

All the same, she cries on the front porch, and I wish I could go over there and hold her. I wish I could rescue her and hold her in my arms. How do people live like this? How do they survive? And maybe that's why I'm here. What if they can't anymore?

Make no mistake, the woman (Rosa) had a heart. She had a bigger one than people would think. There was a lot in it, stored up, high in miles of hidden shelving.

It's like I've been chosen. But chosen for what? I ask. The answer is quite simple: To care.

An old homeless man confronts me quietly with his beard, his missing teeth, and his poverty.

But remember that forgiveness too is a power. To beg for it is a power, and to withhold or bestow it is a power, perhaps the greatest. Maybe none of this is about control. Maybe it isn't really about who can own whom, who can do what to whom and get away with it, even as far as death. Maybe it isn't about who can sit and who has to kneel or stand or lie down, legs spread open. Maybe it's about who can do what to whom and be forgiven for it. Never tell me it amounts to the same thing.

But some people can't tell where it hurts. They can't calm down. They can't ever stop howling.

And yet it disturbs me to learn I have hurt someone unintentionally. I want all my hurts to be intentional.

He doesn't understand yet that guilt comes to you not from the things you've done, but from the things that others have done to you.

Tell me where it hurts, she'd say. Stop howling. Just calm down and show me where. But some people can't tell where it hurts. They can't calm down. They can't ever stop howling.

I am certain that a Sewing Machine would relieve as much human suffering as a hundred Lunatic Asylums, and possibly a good deal more.

Now we come to forgiveness. Don't worry about forgiving me right now. There are more important things. For instance: keep the others safe, if they are safe. Don't let them suffer too much. If they have to die, let it be fast. You might even provide a Heaven for them. We need You for that. Hell we can make for ourselves.

I could see how you could do extreme things for the person you loved. Adam One said that when you loved a person, that love might not always get returned the way you wanted, but it was a good thing anyway because love went out all around you like an energy wave, and a creature you didn't know would be helped by it.

I thought my heart was pure. We do like to have such good opinions of our own motives when we're about to do something harmful, to someone else.

There's only so long you can feel sorry for a person before you come to feel that their affliction is an act of malice committed by them against you.

We shouldn't have been so scornful; we should have had compassion. But compassion takes work, and we were young.

I would never blame a human creature for feeling lonely.