Quotes About Compassion

we are—all of us—just imperfect people on a flawed planet who are trying to hold on to what is good and lovely and right.

Everyone has a past, and everyone's past matters.

For a moment, there was no age difference between the two of them, no crossed purposes, no opposing forces. They were just two women trying to chisel a happy life out of giant hulk of rough-edged circumstances.

Thistle House is for people who love and care for one another. We respect one another in this house, Emmeline. We carry one another's burdens. We weep for one another and we laugh with one another. We hold one another by the hand when the lights go out and when the way seems hopeless. We work together and we share the table together and we pray together. No matter how old we are or what we are called.

I want to learn how to look deep to see what people are really like. I want to be the kind of person who plunges past the surface and seeks to know the inner thoughts of the people I am around.

Why do people hurt other people? I murmur. Lila laughs. Because they can, sweetheart. I look at the face in the mirror, at that sad face. That can't be the reason Lila leans in. Her face is next to mine.... ...Sometimes they just can't help it, she says. They don't mean to hurt anyone. It just happens. And there's nothing you can do about it. Nothing ? Not unless you've got a magic wand, love.

If I had learned anything from this past year, it is that despair is love's fiercest enemy.

This is what makes us sublimely human, isn't it? Not unsullied genetic perfection, but when we stubbornly love and honor one another.

How we treat one another is what we are still able to do something about.

her it is complicated fighting for freedom and justice, but necessary if they were to hold on to what made them human and not beasts.

Sometimes it's not about right and wrong but now and later. Right now, we are having to put up with a difficult situation that we don't deserve, and it's not right.

with courage and resolve and the refusal to allow those without voices to remain unheard.

This is what makes us sublimely human, isn't it? Not unsullied genetic perfection, but when we stubbornly love and honor one another. Just the way we are.

what we will hate. We decide what we will do with the love and hate. Every day we decide. It was this that revealed who we were, not the color of our flesh or the shape of our eyes or the language we spoke.

she is in the company of women who have given what help they could.

We shouldn't think for a moment that just because their lives are short they shouldn't be here.

killing disabled people in the name of mercy.

The capacity to return hate with love wipes reason off the map, at least for a while. I cannot understand it any more than I can understand how, knowing that story, black churches across America continue to open their doors and their hearts to white strangers again and again. What love and courage. What courage and love.

DeWaal and others have shown that primates have the capacity most basic to moral development: the ability to put yourself in others' shoes. The feeling of sympathy, the capacity for gratitude, the sense of justice all start right there.

Tip for a parent trying to be the north star to a child desperate for sun: Sometimes it's enough just to shine.

You may never learn the names of any of the people you talk to in a dog park, even after many, many hours spent there with them, and many hours of conversation. But if - knock on wood - anything should ever happen to your dog, these nameless non-strangers will rally, sympathize, offer to help, and hold your hand. I know this from experience.

Why would an old couple in San Francisco give to the Los Angeles Library to save the books?" one note read. "Well, [my] father collapsed and died in the LA Public Library on July 17, 1952. Heart Attack or stroke. I never found out which. Good luck with your campaign.

All the things that are wrong in the world seem conquered by a library's simple unspoken promise: Here I am, please tell me your story; here is my story, please listen.

All the things that are wrong in the world seem conquered by a library's simple unspoken promise: Here I am, please tell me your story; here is my story, please listen.