Quotes About Compassion

People who hadn't suffered a loss yet struck me as not quite grown up.

You wake in the morning, you're feeling fine, but all at once you think, "Something's not right. Something's off somewhere; what is it?" And then you remember that it's your child—whichever one is unhappy. She

One sad thing about this world is that the acts that take the most out of you are usually the ones that people will never know about.

You wake in the morning, you're feeling fine, but all at once you think, "Something's not right. Something's off somewhere; what is it?" And then you remember that it's your child—whichever one is unhappy. She circled the hall to close the door to

The mere fact that her children were children, condemned for years to feel powerless and bewildered and confined, filled her with such pity that to add any further hardship to their lives seemed unthinkable. She could excuse anything in them, forgive them everything. She would have made a better mother, perhaps, if she hadn't remembered so well how it felt to be a child.

I believe that most people who seem scary are just sad.

So, this is how it works," she said. "This is what families do for each other—hide a few uncomfortable truths, allow a few self-deceptions. Little kindnesses." "And little cruelties," he said. "And little cruelties," she agreed, and she swung his hand between them. He

So, this is how it works," she said. "This is what families do for each other—hide a few uncomfortable truths, allow a few self-deceptions. Little kindnesses.

So, this is how it works," she said. "This is what families do for each other—hide a few uncomfortable truths, allow a few self-deceptions. Little kindnesses." "And little cruelties," he said. "And little cruelties," she agreed, and she swung his hand between

She would have made a better mother, perhaps, if she hadn't remembered so well how it felt to be a child.

Who said, 'You're only ever as happy as your least happy child?' Ã¢â'¬Â she'd asked Ree in last week's pottery class. "Socrates," Ree answered promptly. "Really? I was thinking more along the lines of Michelle Obama.

Micah let a brief pause develop and then he asked what Deemolay had been up to---her most troubled, most disruptive student. Deemolay caused chaos the instant he entered the classroom, but he lived in a car with his grandmother and Micah knew Cass had a soft spot in her heart for him. Deemolay had poked a plastic ruler into Jennaya's back at lunchtime and told her it was a switchblade. That was an interesting topic.

God," he said. "I come here to say I feel bad about your husband, and listen to me, yakking about my own little troubles." "I wouldn't call divorce a little trouble," Willa said.

About your son, she seemed to be saying: Just put your hand here. I'm scared, too. We're all scared. You're not the only one.

I'm just saying a person can be too understanding," he said. "Too sympathizing and pitying, like. Getting into a kid's private brain." "There is no such thing as 'too understanding.' Ã¢â'¬Â "Well, count on a social worker to think that.

The writer has to die to give birth to the intellectual in the service of the wretched of the earth.

Write as if you were dying. At the same time, assume you write for an audience consisting solely of terminal patients. That is, after all, the case. What would you begin writing if you knew you would die soon? What could you say to a dying person that would not enrage by its triviality?

We have not yet encountered any god who is as merciful as a man who flicks a beetle over on its feet.

Cruelty is a mystery, and a waste of pain.

I do not so much write a book as sit up with it, as with a dying friend. During visiting hours, I enter its room with dread and sympathy for its many disorders. I hold its hand and hope it will get better. This tender relationship can change in a twinkling. If you skip a visit or two, a work in progress will turn on you.

Dedicate (donate, give all) your life to something larger than yourself and pleasure - to the largest thing you can: to God, to relieving suffering, to contributing to knowledge, to adding to literature, or something else. Happiness lies this way, and it beats pleasure hollow.

Because that's what people need after traumas, apparently - lots of long conversations about the effects of trauma.

Let's kill a rabbit," Col says when he wakes up.

The violence we preach is not the violence of the sword, the violence of hatred. It is the violence of love, of brotherhood, the violence that wills to beat weapons into sickles for work