Quotes About Compassion

There was the answer to why people got tangled with people. Because when you were down, when you were wallowing, someone you mattered to would ask if you were okay.

I crossed the line." "The line shifts." Now he gave those shoulders a quick, impatient shake. "If the law, if justice has no compassion, no fluidity, no humanity, how is it justice?

You know better than to blame yourself." "Knowing better doesn't always stop it.

mostly suck—it's the law of averages, I figure, especially when you're on the job. Then you cross paths with people like that. Bad shit's happened to them, seriously bad shit, but they still come out of it decent.

I'm not strong." "You're wrong," Eve said as she rose. "You came here, you asked to help someone who needs help. You're no weak sister, Mrs. Patrick, and he can't make you one.

That works for now. Eve's stomach began to clench and jitter. There were tears swimming in her aide's eyes. Peabody's lips were quivering. What are you doing? she demanded. Nothing. Sir. How come you're going to cry? You know how I feel about crying on the job. I'm not crying. And it appalled her that she was on the edge of it. I just don't feel very well, that's all. I wonder, sir, if I could be excused from the briefing at sixteen hundred.

We don't always do what's right, what's good. Not even for each other. But when it counts, down to the core of it, I believe we do exactly that. What's right and good for each other.

Stuff it, Jerry. This isn't just police business. It's humanity's business. Humanity, Jerry!

And personally, I don't get murder. Why kill people when you can just ignore them?

Never in my life have I known anyone who has such a basic dislike of people, yet has such unstinting and bottomless compassion for them.

Kindness isn't a job, Eve, it's a choice.

Do you know what it is to find someone who accepts you for what you are, and is willing to love you anyway?

I see you. I know you. I love you.

The Church ruling is very clear. And rules often ignore the human and the individual factor. I think God ignores nothing. I think His compassion for His children is infinite. I can't believe, in my heart, God closes his door to those in pain, to those in desperation.

For himself, then. For his idea of the world, a world in which men do not use shovels to beat corpses into a more convenient shape for processing.

There are people who have the capacity to imagine themselves as someone else, there are people who have no such capacity (when the lack is extreme, we call them psychopaths), and there are people who have the capacity but choose not to exercise it.

I'm sorry, my child, I just find it hard to whip up an interest in the subject. It's admirable, what you do, what she does, but to me animal-welfare people are a bit like Christians of a certain kind. Everyone is so cheerful and well-intentioned that after a while you itch to go off and do some raping and pillaging. Or to kick a cat.

That is what whores are for, after all; to put up with the ecstasies of the unlovely

Anyway, said Robert, they got a big fright. After that they started dropping pellets in the water and digging latrines and spraying for flies and bringing buckets of soap. But do you think they do it because they love us? Not a hope. They prefer it that we live because we look too terrible when we get sick and die. If we grew thin and turned into paper and then into ash and floated away, they wouldn't give a stuff for us. They just don't want to get upset. They want to go to sleep feeling good.

Decency: the inexplicable: the ground of all ethics. Things we do not do. We do not stare when the soul leaves the body, but veil our eyes with tears or cover them with our hands. We do not stare at scars, which are places where the soul has struggled to leave and been forced back, closed up, sewn in.

It occurs to me that we crush insects beneath our feet, miracles of creation too, beetles, worms, cockroaches, ants, in their various ways.

Why has he taken this job?... For the sake of the dogs? But the dogs are dead; and what do dogs know of honour and dishonour anyway? For himself then. For his idea of the world, a world in which men do not use shovels to beat corpses into a more convenient shape for processing.

Do you remember Vlek, who was such a good sheepdog that she and Jakob alone could drive a whole flock past you at the counting-post? Do you remember how Vlek grew old and sickly and could not hold down her food, and how there was no one to shoot her but you, and how you went for a walk afterwards because you did not want anyone to see you cry?

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