Quotes About Compassion

The list goes on. There are myriad versions of the talk because there are myriad ways to be human. And we wish we had the space to capture all of these conversations within these chapters, because we know they are happening, and we know people are hurting.

We love those who know the worst of us and don't turn their faces away.

What I want for myself, I want for everybody.

If I could just write it down in a piece of paper, then maybe she could get a decent night's sleep, eat a little of her dinner. Maybe she could have a minute's worth of peace.

Take what people give you. Drink their milkshakes.

You are a steward of the pain and injustices people have visited upon you. Or, if you prefer we could call you a scrupulous coroner.

Zinnia always wants to hug me and pat me because she has a boy my same age named Melvin. I said maybe some day Melvin could come play at our farm, and I could bring him to the maze and show him the shortcuts. Zinnia started crying. That's when I seen that she has freckles.

So maybe that's what love means. Having the capacity to forgive the one who wronged you, no matter how deep the hurt was.

Bless me, Father, for I have sinned," I repeated. "But never as much as I have been sinned against!

I am not a smart man, particularly, but one day, at long last, I stumbled from the dark woods of my own, and my family's, and my country's past, holding in my hands these truths: that love grows from the rich loam of forgiveness; that mongrels make good dogs; that the evidence of God exists in the roundness of things.

You are a meticulous steward of the pain and injustices people have visited upon you.

Vicarious traumatization. It can happen to those who bear secondary witness to the traumas of others.

So maybe that's what love means. Having the capacity to forgive the one who wronged you, no matter how deep the hurt was. At any rate, I'm glad she doesn't know about the corpse that's down there in that well. I've spared her that much.

and yet she continues to skip rope in my mind and on my canvases, raising her dark, hopeful face to the sky, innocent of the depth of people's cruelty toward "the other"—those who, for whatever reason, must swim against the tide instead of letting it carry them. . . .

So much for 'Give us your tired and hungry, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free

that we need to be charitable to one another because it's the right thing to do, "not because it allows us to rack up mileage points for our trip to some imaginary heaven.

He sat down on one of the pilings looking sick and sad and I knew he was thinking about Ma and the baby. I wanted badly to cheer him up but singing commercials seemed the wrong thing to do.

Forgiveness is the rich loam from which love can grow.

The key to serenity is forgiveness.

For there is no friend like a sister In calm or stormy weather; To cheer one on the tedious way, To fetch one if one goes astray, To lift one if one totters down, To strengthen whilst one stands.

Does not the New Testament exhort us to extend a hand to one who has fallen? Professor Sumner would have us place a foot on the fallen one as he lies prone and pitiable, the better to remain his superior.

Here is a girl who is pretty in a quiet way, I told myself. I bet she's had a very hard life.

He was as kind and slow with me as he'd been that first summer and I pushed away all my anger and hurt and distrust because he owed me love.

Love the earth and sun and animals, Despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, Stand up for the stupid and crazy, Devote your income and labor to others... And your very flesh shall be a great poem.