Quotes About Compassion

Sometimes the simple act of humanizing problems sheds an important light on them, a light that often goes out the minute a stigmatizing label is applied.

When we stop numbing and start feeling and learning again, we have to reevaluate everything, especially how to choose loving ourselves over making other people comfortable. It was the hardest work I've ever done and continue to do.

Compassionate people are boundaried people.

Not caring about our own pain and the pain of others is not working. How much longer are we willing to keep pulling drowning people out of the river one by one, rather than walking to the headwaters of the river to find the source of the pain? What will it take for us to let go of that earned self-righteousness and travel together to the cradle of the pain that is throwing all of us in at such a rate that we couldn't possibly save everyone?

We don't judge people when we feel good about ourselves.

She wasn't afraid of people in need because she wasn't afraid of needing others," my mom explained. "She didn't mind extending kindness to others, because she herself relied on the kindness of others." My mom and I didn't need to unpack the emotion behind that story. We both understood what MeeMaw had that we didn't: The capacity to receive.

Each person's grief is as unique as their fingerprint. But what everyone has in common is that no matter how they grieve, they share a need for their grief to be witnessed. That

Empathy is a strange and powerful thing. There is no script. There is no right way or wrong way to do it. It's simply listening, holding space, withholding judgement, emotionally connecting, and communicating that incredibly healing message of "you're not alone.

understood that people would do almost anything to not feel pain, including causing pain and abusing power, and I understood that there were very few people who could handle being held accountable for causing hurt without rationalizing, blaming, or shutting down.

Compassion is not a virtue—it is a commitment. It's not something we have or don't have—it's something we choose to practice.

The after-school specials of my youth seemed to be dedicated to exploring just these ideas. They brought us the mean boy who really just wanted to be included and the know-it-all girl who was showing off at school to hide her misery over her parents' recent divorce.

And perhaps the most painful lesson of that day hit me so hard that it took my breath away: It was clear from the data that we cannot give our children what we don't have. Where we are on our journey of living and loving with our whole hearts is a much stronger indicator of parenting success than anything we can learn from how-to books.

But the more we're willing to seek out moments of collective joy and show up for experiences of collective pain—for real, in person, not online—the more difficult it becomes to deny our human connection, even with people we may disagree with.

I didn't want my level of self-love to limit how much I can love my children or my husband. Why? Because loving them and accepting their imperfections is much easier than turning that light of loving-kindness on myself.

our imperfections are not inadequacies;

The gap starts here: We can't give people what we don't have. Who we are matters immeasurably more than what we know or who we want to be.

We move what we're learning from our heads to our hearts through our hands.

We invite compassion into our lives when we act compassionately toward ourselves and others, and we feel connected in our lives when we reach out and connect.

I gave him a nervous smile and said "Say more." Another favorite rumble tool. Asking someone to "say more" often leads to profoundly deeper and more productive rumbling. Context and details matter. Peel the onion. Stephen Covey's sage advice still stands: "Seek first to understand, then to be understood.

May you always do for others and let others do for you. —Bob Dylan

When we give ourselves permission to be imperfect, when we find self-worth despite our imperfections, when we build connection networks that affirm and value us as imperfect beings, we are much more capable of change.

Harriet Lerner teaches, to listen with the same passion with which we want to be heard.

We are biologically, cognitively, physically, and spiritually wired to love, to be loved, and to belong. When

There's an old saying that I lead by now "People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care.