Quotes About Compassion

If you had a table spread for a feast, and was making merry with your friends, you would think it was kind to let me come and sit down and rejoice with you, because you'd think I should like to share those good things; but I should like better to share in your trouble and your labour.

More helpful than all wisdom is one draught of simple human pity that will not forsake us.

We are children of a large family, and must learn, as such children do, not to expect that our little hurts will be made much of - to be content with little nurture and caressing, and help each other the more.

One must be poor to know the luxury of giving!

There is no escaping the fact that want of sympathy condemns us to a corresponding stupidity.

As Celia bent over the paper, Dorothea put her cheek against her sister's arm caressingly. Celia understood the action. Dorothea saw that she had been in the wrong, and Celia pardoned her. Since they could remember, there had been a mixture of criticism and awe in the attitude of Celia's mind towards her elder sister. The younger had always worn a yoke, but is there any yoked creature without its private opinions?

That plain, middle-aged face, with a grave penetrating kindness in it, seeming to tell of a human being who had reached a firm, safe strand, but was looking with helpful pity towards the strugglers still tossed by the waves, had an effect on Maggie at this moment which was afterwards remembered by her as if it had been a promise.

He was one of those men, and they are not the commonest, of whom we can know the best only by following them away from the marketplace, the platform, and the pulpit, entering with them into their own homes, hearing the voice with which they speak to the young and aged about their own hearthstone, and witnessing their thoughtful care for the everyday wants of everyday companions, who take all their kindness as a matter of course, and not as a subject for panegyric.

When we are treated well, we naturally begin to think that we are not altogether unmeritous, and that it is only just we should treat ourselves well, and not mar our own good fortune.

What quarrel, what harshness, what unbelief in each other can subsist in the presence of a great calamity, when all the artificial vesture of our life is gone, and we are all one with each other in primitive mortal needs?

If we had lost our own chief good, other people's good would remain, and that is worth trying for.

When a homemaking aunt scolds a niece for following her evangelistic passion instead of domestic pursuits, her reply is interesting. First, she clarifies that God's individual call on her doesn't condemn those in more conventional roles. Then, she says she can no more ignore the cry of the lost than her aunt can the cry of her child.

To most mortals there is a stupidity which is unendurable and a stupidity which is altogether acceptable — else, indeed, what would become of social bonds?

Trouble is so hard to bear, is it not?—How can we live and think that any one has trouble—piercing trouble—and we could help them, and never try?

Yes, young people are usually blind to everything but their own wishes, and seldom imagine how much those wishes cost others

I believe that people are almost always better than their neighbors think they are," said Dorothea.

I only thought of myself, and I made you grieve. It hurts me now to think of your grief. You must not grieve anymore for me. It is better_it shall be better with me because I have known you.

Indeed we are most of us brought up in the notion that the highest motive for not doing a wrong is something irrespective of the beings who would suffer the wrong.

An Italian with white mice!—on the contrary, he was a creature who entered into every one's feelings, and could take the pressure of their thought instead of urging his own with iron resistance.

Dorothea had little vanity, but she had the ardent woman's need to rule beneficently by making the joy of another soul.

how hard it is to walk always in fear of hurting another who is tied to us.

You must not judge of Celia's feeling from mine. I think she likes these small pets. She had a tiny terrier once, which she was very fond of. It made me unhappy, because I was afraid of treading on it. I am rather short-sighted.

I hold it a crime to expose a man's sin unless I'm clear it must be done to save the innocent

What do we live for, if not to make life less difficult for each other?