Quotes About Compassion

The principle suffering of the poor is shame and disgrace. It is a toxic shame -- a global sense of failure of the whole self. This shame can seep so deep down... To this end, one hopes (against all human inclination) to model not the "one false move" God but the "no matter whatness" of God. You seek to imitate the kind of God you believe in, where disappointment is, well, Greek to Him. You strive to live the black spiritual that says, "God looks beyond our fault and sees our need.

You stand with the least likely to succeed until success is succeeded by something more valuable: kinship. You stand with the belligerent, the surly, and the badly behaved until bad behavior is recognized for the language it is: the vocabulary of the deeply wounded and of those whose burdens are more than they can bear.

Just assume the answer to every question is compassion.

Compassion isn't just about feeling the pain of others; it's about bringing them in toward yourself. If we love what God loves, then, in compassion, margins get erased. 'Be compassionate as God is compassionate,' means the dismantling of barriers that exclude.

Love is a one-way street. Love, like respect isn't something you get; it's something you give

I shall pray for your soul,' promised Nessarose. I shall wait for your shoes,' Elphie answered.

But if all things equally fall short of this dignity, one thing there is that is not beneath the dignity of God, and that is, to do good to him that needed it.

If your gaze takes in the world, a person's a puny thing. If a person is all you see, the rest falls away and she becomes the world.

When I'm struggling with the fear of my own death, or with grief over the death of someone I love, what comforts me most isn't philosophies or ideas. It's the presence of someone who loves me just sitting with me silently, letting me feel what I have to feel, not trying to fix it or make it go away but simply being with me while I feel

Nothing,' wrote Tolstoy, 'can make our life, or the lives of other people, more beautiful than perpetual kindness.

I thought: to be tough is to be fragile; to be tender is to be truly fierce.

The toughness I was learning was not a martyred doggedness, a dumb heroism, but the art of accommodation. I thought: to be tough is to be fragile; to be tender is to be truly fierce.

No one is completely unhappy at the failure of his best friend.

We don't need to be perfect to do good deeds in the world, but we need to be sincere in our efforts.

Gandhi is an example of a man who grew from being self-centered as he was learning to become a lawyer in England, to becoming more family- and social oriented in South-Africa, where he led a reformation of Indian rights, to becoming determined in helping his nation recover from British rule at which he succeeded in the end with the help of a great many people. At the end of his life Gandhi was increasingly focused on a larger picture, encasing the whole world in his vision of a peaceful future.

Instead of railing against hate, we focus on love; instead of judging the angry, we offer them our peaceful presence; instead of warning against a dystopian future, we provide a hopeful vision.

If you are able to show goodness to yourself, your family, friends, and maybe to some in your community, you are doing better than most. In fact, it can be harder to show goodness to those who stand close to you than to those who are in faraway places. If more people tended to their own gardens, all of society would flourish as a result.

Stop wishing that other people would act differently, either accept them for who they are or stop being around them.

When a person has developed an ongoing relationship with the peaceful internal state, then he or she will likely begin to display certain characteristics such as empathy, forgiveness, magnanimity, altruism, compassion, and benevolence. And when someone displays any of the above, we generally start speaking about that person as spiritual, even though he or she may not represent a religion of any kind.

Moral growth corresponds with people's ability to see the world from an ever-increasing number of perspectives and act accordingly.

We, the willing, should practice the art of lifting the ideological veil and seeing co-humanity everywhere.

There are two quick ways of connecting with people. Find a common interest or share a painful experience that people can relate to.

Wer nochmal davongekommen ist, mag sich nicht dauernd dran erinnern lassen, dass andere weniger Glück hatten. Dass sie auf Hilfe angewiesen sind. Und ein Recht auf Hilfe haben!

Hate often separates those who ought to aid one another, since they are tending toward the same goal, and sympathy binds men together who are forced to do battle with one another.