Quotes About Compassion

But all that power has culminated in gentleness. It is as if that is the point of power: to allow one to access the higher registers of gentleness.

Who, in your life, do you remember most fondly, with the most undeniable feelings of warmth? Those who were kindest to you.

They didn't have to feel what you felt; they just had to be supported in feeling what they felt.

Saunders writes like something of a saint. He seems in touch with some better being. He teaches us not only how to write but how to live. He sets the bar and also the example. He hopes we might see the possibility of our better selves and act on it. He seems sent—what other way to put it?—to teach us mercy and grace.

Only let yourself deal with a man without love…and there are no limits to the suffering you will bring on yourself.

Then suddenly something softened in me, maybe at the sight of Ma so weak, and I dropped my head and waded all docile into that crowd of know-nothings, thinking: Okay, okay, you sent me, now bring me back. Find some way to bring me back, you fuckers, or you are the sorriest bunch of bastards the world has ever known.

They were sorry, they were saying with their bodies, they were accepting each other back, and that feeling, that feeling of being accepted back again and again, of someone's affection for you expanding to encompass whatever new flawed thing had just manifested in you, that was the deepest, dearest thing he'd ever—

and that feeling, that feeling of being accepted back again and again, of someone's affection for you expanding to encompass whatever new flawed thing had just manifested in you, that was the deepest, dearest thing he'd ever—

George Saunders

At the core of each lay suffering; our eventual end, the many losses we must experience on the way to that end We must try to see one another in this way. As suffering, limited beings-- Perennially outmatched by circumstance, inadequately endowed with compensatory graces.

Though on the surface it seemed every person was different, this was not true. At the core of each lay suffering; our eventual end, the many losses we must experience on the way to that end. We must try to see one another in this way. As suffering, limited beings -- Perennially outmatched by circumstance, inadequately endowed with compensatory graces.

In your life, there have been High Kindness periods and Low Kindness periods, and you know what inclined you toward the former and away from the latter.

At the core of each lay suffering; our eventual end; the many loses we must experience on the way to that end. We must try to see one another in this way. As suffering limited beings- Perennially outmatched by circumstance, inadequately endowed with compensatory graces.

George Saunders

In your life, there have been High Kindness periods and Low Kindness periods, and you know what inclined you toward the former and away from the latter. It's an exciting idea: Since we have observed that kindness is variable, we might also sensibly conclude that it is improvable; that is, there must be approaches and practices that can actually increase our ambient level of kindness.

Do all the other things, the ambitious things — travel, get rich, get famous, innovate, lead, fall in love, make and lose fortunes, swim naked in wild jungle rivers (after first having it tested for monkey poop) – but as you do, to the extent that you can, err in the direction of kindness.

We get our butts kicked by real life, and people come to our defense, and help us, and we learn that we're not separate, and don't want to be. We see people near and dear to us dropping away, and are gradually convinced that maybe we too will drop away (someday, a long time from now). Most people, as they age, become less selfish and more loving.

Since, according to me, your life is going to be a gradual process of becoming kinder and more loving: Hurry up. Speed it along. Start right now.

At the end of my life, I know I won't be wishing I'd held more back, been less effusive, more often stood on ceremony, forgiven less, spent more days oblivious to the secret wishes and fears of the people around me.

Your life is going to be a gradual process of becoming kinder and more loving: Hurry up. Speed it along. Start right now. There's a confusion in each of us, a sickness, really: selfishness. But there's also a cure. Find out what makes you kinder, what opens you up and brings out the most loving, generous, and unafraid version of you—and go after those things as if nothing else matters. Because, actually, nothing else does.

This idea of existing on a continuum doesn't mean, "We are all good," or "We are all, brothers and sisters, exactly the same," or "All is forgiven, no matter what you do," but, rather, something like: "Wherever you are on the human continuum, I can know you, approximately. I'm going to proceed on that basis: whatever tendencies are large in you, must be here somewhere, perhaps smaller and/or nascent, in or me.

We must try to see one another in this way. roger bevins iii As suffering, limited beings— hans vollman

His heart dropped at the thought of the killing. hans vollman Did the thing merit it. Merit the killing. On the surface it was a technicality (mere Union) but seen deeper, it was something more.

What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness. Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded sensibly, reservedly, mildly.