Quotes About Compassion

never let a problem to be solved become more important than the person to be loved.

One thing is clear to me: we, as human beings, must be willing to accept people who are different from ourselves.

Empathy is really the opposite of spiritual meanness. It's the capacity to understand that every war is both won and lost. And that someone else's pain is as meaningful as your own.

Terms like that, "Humane Society," are devised with people like me in mind, who don't care to dwell on what happens to the innocent.

There is no point treating a depressed person as though she were just feeling sad, saying, 'There now, hang on, you'll get over it.' Sadness is more or less like a head cold- with patience, it passes. Depression is like cancer.

There is no point treating a depressed person as though she were just feeling sad, saying, 'There now, hang on, you'll get over it.' Sadness is more or less like a head cold- with patience, it passes. Depression is like cancer.

The friend who holds your hand and says the wrong thing is made of dearer stuff than the one who stays away.

What I want is so simple I almost can't say it: elementary kindness.

In a world as wrong as this one, all we can do is make things as right as we can.

What keeps you going isn't some fine destination but just the road you're on, and the fact that you know how to drive. You keep your eyes open, you see this damned-to-hell world you got born into, and you ask yourself, 'What life can I live that will let me breathe in & out and love somebody or something and not run off screaming into the woods?

Your comfort is my silence.

It seems to me that unless you or someone very close to you has had a bad head injury, you really can't fathom it. You have no concept of what it is all about. It was so difficult for my whole family, not just me.

Perhaps better we not obscure the idea that happiness and misery, kindness and greed, and good works and bad deeds are within the capacities of us all, not merely a select few.

A pregnant woman facing the most dire circumstances must be able to count on her doctor to do what is medically necessary to protect her from serious physical harm.

No one has a perfect life but I didn't want to say that to her. "I think we use horses to repair our own lives. If we can make their lives trouble-free then it doesn't matter so much if ours are a mess.

In fact, we are often more interesting and sympathetic as human beings when something has gone wrong than when we are convinced of our own infallibility.

Bertha knelt in front of me and took both my hands in hers and said, "Your mama loves you very much, Charlie. But sometimes, she just loses her way." Loses her way? I'd be happy to draw her a map to show her the way back to being my mama again.

That night when I went to bed, I laid there in the dark and pictured a clothesline full of somebody's else's troubles. I knew for sure there were a lot of them I'd rather pluck off of that line than mine. I imagined what the other troubles might be. There would probably be toothaches and failed math tests. Lost cats and ugly hair. Cheating boyfriends and broken-down cars. But none of those could hold a candle to my troubles, weighing down that clothesline like a sack full of bricks.

You can't judge people for the mistakes they make. You judge them for how they fix those mistakes.

When it was time for me to leave, I thanked Mrs. Odom, climbed on Lenny's bike, and set off for home. As I pedaled up the road, I turned and glanced back at the Odoms' house. I remembered that first day on the school bus when I had seen it and thought it was so sad-looking. Then I pictured all those boys in that little kitchen getting loved on by their mama and that house didn't look one bit sad anymore.

Barbara O'Connor

My mama says you should never keep your troubles to yourself. She says if you share 'em with somebody, they get smaller.

Barbara O'Connor

Suddenly Howard seemed different. He didn't seem so much like a nosy up-down boy, nagging me half to death about being my Backpack Buddy. He seemed more like somebody being nice to me. Somebody I had shared my troubles with.