Quotes About Compassion

I can be of no real help to another unless I see that the two of us are in this together, that all of our differences are superficial and meaningless, and that only the countless ways we are alike has any importance at all.

When we are centered on giving, we also receive, because our personal anxieties begin to dissipate from our thoughts. When we recognize that what is in the best interests of another is also of complete benefit to us, we gain inner tranquillity, if only briefly, because for that moment we have left our personal hell behind. The

The love in us can unite with the love in others, but two bodies can never become one.

We ask for help and help is given. Often we do not recognize that other people's alcoholism, sexual betrayals, chronic illnesses, and alienating behavior are actually cries for help. But unquestionably God recognizes every plea no matter what form it takes, and God finds some way to give us as much help as we are willing to receive at that time.

We can perform service to others for a variety of reasons. We can do good deeds because of fear, guilt, or the desire to inflate our egos. But if we really want to be loving, if we truly wish to respond to the call of justice and freedom, we must first have the courage to look into our own emptiness. We must somehow even come to love it.

Guilt says, "If only you had done it better." Shame says, "If only you had been better.

There are three meanings of bearing love: to endure it, to carry it, and to bring it forth.

She pushed a strand of white hair under the scarf. Surely, it seemed to Sweeney and Wettlaufer, she was the essence of the good deed unselfishly performed, the deed that could save the world if the world wanted saving.

I knew something about myself. Killing was indecent, depraved. I would not get used to it. One killed to survive, to keep one's loved ones alive. No good attached to ending the lives of others. That Ukrainian kid had parents, a family, hopes. Like the millions of us now dying for no reason.

I can have peace of mind only when I forgive rather than judge.

When I am able to resist the temptation to judge others, I can see them as teachers of forgiveness in my life, reminding me that I can only have peace of mind when I forgive rather than judge.

No matter how strange it may look, most people are actually trying to be helpful.* That

Your most powerful method of helping other people is to help yourself.

If you want to know a king, see how he treats his defeated foes. All are gracious to their equals; one in a thousand is gracious to an enemy he has conquered.

I'm beginning to feel that same absolute determination that we cannot -must not!- simply sit back and accept cruelty and injustice. If we do, we become part of it.

I would hope that understanding and reconciliation are not limited to the 19th hole alone.

As I rejected amnesty, so I reject revenge. I ask all Americans who ever asked for goodness and mercy in their lives, who ever sought forgiveness for their trespasses, to join in rehabilitating all the casualties of the tragic conflict of the past. (On Americans who avoided conscription during the Vietnam War, to Veterans of Foreign Wars)

The hagaddah came to Sarajevo for a reason. It was here to test us, to see if there were people who could see that what united us was more than what divided us. That to be a human being matters more than to be a Jew or a Muslim, Catholic or Orthodox. p. 361

And so, as generally happens, those who have most give least, and those with less somehow make shrift to share.

I simply ask you to see that there is only one thing to do when we fall, and that is to get up, and go on with the life that is set in front of us, and try and do the good of which our hands are capable for all the people who come in our way...

I had come to think that the Wampanoag, who dealt so kindly with their babes, were wiser than we in this. What profit was there in requiring little ones to behave like adults? Why bridle their spirits and struggle to break their God-given nature before they had the least understanding of what was wanted of them?

To take a people who were traveling apace the broadway to hell, and to be able to turn them, and set their face to God. . . . It is what we must strive for.

You sat in your nice little flat all through our war and watched us, bleeding all over the TV news. And you thought, 'How awful!' and then you got up and made yourself another cup of gourmet coffee." I flinched when he said that. It was a pretty accurate description.

I do not propose to go on as I have been, feeding on the gall of my own grief. For you grieve, and yet you live, and are useful, and bring life to others.