Quotes About Compassion

Kindness could be so much more painful than cruelty.

Allowing one's self to be forgiven is just as hard as forgiving. Harder in some ways. Because to be forgiven, one first has to admit to being at fault.

Family members must forgive one another.

How we treat our dead is central to our humanity.

Because whenever a woman kills her child, every other mother—at least, every one who's honest with herself—has a flash of sympathy. Not empathy. They don't want to have done it, cannot imagine doing it. But they know.

She was a polite person, and politeness meant making others feel better even if it made you feel like shit.

throwing out "I sorry" as if it were confetti, her private little parade of destruction rolling past, leaving Eliza to clean up all of the mess. They had tried hard to teach their children the importance of genuine remorse, what it was to say and mean "I'm sorry.

Two people can brave the taunts that one person finds intolerable.

It's exhausting, meaning well in a world that assumes you're a pig because of the body you're born into, but then—it's so much

People today are always talking about prejudice and stuff, like the rest of us never knew it.

Whenever I got cross with him, I would think about that girl at the bus stop, how unhappy she was, how she thought no one could ever want to take her on a date, much less love her. It may sound silly, but I figured out that being happy made me happier than being unhappy ever did.

What are the words to say to someone who gave you back your life, who believed that you still had a soul, who acknowledged how bad it was to feel? Shouldn't there be another language for this? Different words altogether?

We say 'Thank you very much' and 'I so appreciate what you have done' to people who fill our grocery bags, to people who offer us a ride across town. What are the words to say to someone who gave you back your life, who believed that you still had a soul, who acknowledged how bad it was possible to feel? Shouldn't there be another language for this? Different words altogether? And if I use the same old words, did I change what I was trying to say? Did I make it a same old thing?

We say 'Thank you very much' and 'I so appreciate what you have done' to people who fill our grocery bags, to people who offere us a ride across town. What are the words to say to someone who gave you back your life, who believed that you still had a soul, who acknowledged how bad it was possible to feel? Shouldn't there be another language for this? Different words altogether? And if I use the same old words, did I change what I was trying to say? Did I make it a same old thing?

What literature could accomplish by way of moral education was less instruction than an expansion of our capacity for empathy: "it admits us to experiences other than our own.

there's a difference between wanting all stories you read to be about you in the most literal sense, and reading with the hope that you can find a bit of yourself in all stories, however alien they may seem on the surface. When our capacity to identify withers, so does a portion of our humanity.

My mother says that when Mrs. Rowley is mean, which is generally the case, it is really because she is just unhappy, and who could blame her with a husband like that . . . She says this is really the only reason people are ever mean--they have something hurting inside of them, a claw of unhappiness scratching at their hearts, and it hurts them so much that sometimes they have to push it right out of their mouths to scratch someone else, just to give themselves a rest, a moment of relief.

but even more than that, she could have been born anywhere in the world, and to anyone, she and her loved ones suffering in ways she could barely fathom when she listened to the international news.

I'll figure out how to be truer: to let people go if they need to be let go of, and to hold on tight if that's what's called for. I will pay attention, so I can cross each human heart that comes across my path, cross it as true as I can.

And isn't it funny how if one person speaks for real, then the other person can too? We just did that. We just became friends. It's just a matter of finding the right person and crossing that barrier together, almost like you're holding hands, but really you're holding the most tender place inside you.

Oh, Ben," she whispers. "I've sunk as low as I can get. All the sudden. Today," and then says, more loudly and firmly, "You

No!" She pries the frozen square of manure from the dog's teeth and flings it away. Then she unzips her jacket and sighs one of those frustrated sighs that is supposed to help get patience back and which he hears from his wife all the time now. "Remember, Dad,

No es un monstruo -insiste-, es un ser humano. Y ésa es la tragedia, que esto lo ha hecho un ser humano.

Yo lo que quiero, me dije, es un hombre como Dios manda; bondadoso como un perro y presente como una montaña