Quotes About Compassion

14"If you forgive those who sin against you, your heavenly Father will forgive you. 15But if you refuse to forgive others, your Father will not forgive your sins.

To embrace suffering culminates in greater empathy, the capacity to feel what it is like for the other to suffer, which is the ground for unsentimental compassion and love. (157)

Every attitude we assume, ever word we utter, and every act we undertake establishes us in relation to others.

Instead of asking "What is the 'right' or 'wrong' thing to do?" the practitioner asks, "What is the wisest and most compassionate thing to do?

Two damaged people, thrown together in a hostile world, doing their best. What else was there to life, in the end?

Caroline, furthermore, was wan, pale, and dreamily beautiful, an exquisite creature who wept bitterly when she was told that families "of wretched poor" lived south of Canal Street, which was why her coachman would not drive her there.

New Yorkers, New Yorkers like to say, pull together in times of crisis. They are magnificent at rising to difficult occasions. In a blizzard they reach out to help the aged lady cross the street. In a transit strike New Yorkers with automobiles offer lifts to strangers. In a blackout they emerge to help direct traffic and open up their houses to the hapless and the stranded.

As you enter this place of work please choose to make today a great day. Your colleagues, customers, team members, and you yourself will be thankful. Find ways to play. We can be serious about our work without being serious about ourselves. Stay focused in order to be there when your customers and team members most need you. And should you feel your energy lapsing, try this surefire remedy: Find someone who needs a helping hand, a word of support, or a good ear—and make their day.

All the world, every creature. He put no difference between men in this respect, though you meet with them in the likeness of beasts, and devils never so wicked, never so abominable; as long as they are creatures, reach out the cup of salvation to them, if they will drink; open the treasures of grace to them, if they will receive them; agree with them for nothing but faith for justification, and profession of it for their salvation.

And even if somebody else has it much worse, that doesn't really change the fact that you have what you have. Good and bad.

It's great that you can listen and be a shoulder to someone, but what about when someone doesn't need a shoulder? What if they need the arms or something like that? You can't just sit there and put everybody's lives ahead of yours and think that counts as love. You just can't. You have to do things.

What about when someone doesn't need a shoulder? What if they need the arms?

I think that if I ever have kids, and they are upset, I won't tell them that people are starving in China or anything like that because it wouldn't change the fact that they were upset. And even if somebody else has it much worse, that doesn't really change the fact that you have what you have.

I just need to know that someone out there listens and understands and doesn't try to sleep with someone even if they could have. I need to know these people exist.

I think that if I ever have kids, and they are upset, I won't tell them that people are starving in China or anything like that because it wouldn't change the fact that they were upset. And even if somebody else has it much worse, that doesn't really change the fact that you have what you have.

I walk around the school hallways and look at the people. I look at the teachers and wonder why they're here. If they like their jobs. Or us. And I wonder how smart they were when they were fifteen. Not in a mean way. In a curious way. It's like looking at all the students and wondering who's had their heart broken that day, and how they are able to cope with having three quizzes and a book report due on top of that. Or wondering who did the heart breaking. And wondering why.

If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn't help the poor, either we have to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we've got to acknowledge that He commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition and then admit that we just don't want to do it.

If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn't help the poor, either we have to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we've got to acknowledge that He commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition and then admit that we just don't want to do it.

If there were no love there would be no hatred. Just sorrow. And

Gandhi insisted upon returning love for hatred and respect for contempt.

I do not give lectures or a little charity. When I give I give myself.

see yourself as the smallest of the small. Then you can make room for the whole world.

A central pillar of his later teaching was that fearlessness is a prerequisite for nonviolence.

Gandhi: The Essential Writings. Oxford University Press: London, 2008