Quotes About Compassion

She combines them all into one giant sumo wrestler of humanity and punches him again and again in his big flabby stomach.

She still had no solution, no way out, but for just this moment she was sitting opposite someone who understood.

was funny how she'd always thought she had ample supplies of empathy; it turned out that to be truly empathetic she had to experience it.

Their friends had got so old that whenever Connie bought a get-well card she also bought a sympathy card at the same time, to save herself the trouble of going back to the newsagent when they didn't 'get well'.

looked back tenderly and condescendingly at herself a year ago: all that unnecessary drama! There was enough love to go around for everyone.

They were real, there was real pain in the world, right this very moment people were suffering unimaginable atrocities and you couldn't close your heart completely, but you couldn't leave it wide open either, because otherwise how could you possibly live your life, when through pure, random luck you got to live in paradise? You had to register the existence of evil, do the little that you could, and then close your mind and think about new shoes.

You could try as hard as possible to imagine someone else's tragedy – drowning in icy waters, living in a city split by a wall – but nothing truly hurt until it happened to you. Most of all, to your child.

your husband tells you about finding a corpse, you can't then immediately follow it with, "Fancy some pasta?

Parents do tend to judge each other. I don't know why. Maybe because none of us really know what we're doing? And I guess that can sometimes lead to conflict. Just not normally on this sort of scale.

It felt as if Gemma had moved up to a higher, more complex level of human emotions that Lyn couldn't even hope to understand. She didn't know the rules. She didn't know the right thing to say to make it better. It was like Gemma possessed a secret, terrible knowledge that Lyn could only clumsily guess at.

Eat when you're hungry. That's a privilege, you know, to eat when you're hungry, when there are people starving in this world.

Sharing is caring!" "You

You don't want lottery wins for your enemies, but you don't want tragedies for them either. Then they got the upper hand.

She had betrayed him. He chose to still love her. There was nothing more to say.

Friendship is the only cure for hatred, the only guarantee of peace. —

nothing truly hurts until it happens to you. Most of all, to your child.

I think perhaps we've all learned to be a little kinder to one another. And to document everything. Everything.

I'm not going to ask you to carry this too, if you can't carry it.

Other people's problems always seemed so surmountable, and other people's children so much more biddable.

altruism without action, it didn't get better than that!

there was real pain in the world, right this very moment people were suffering unimaginable atrocities and you couldn't close your heart completely, but you couldn't leave it wide open either, because otherwise how could you possibly live your life, when through pure, random luck you got to live in paradise? You had to register the existence of evil, do the little that you could, and then close your mind and think about new shoes.

Friendship is the only cure for hatred, the only guarantee of peace. —Buddhist quote on Ellen O'Farrell's notice board

They should move gingerly through their days, as if they had spinal cord injuries.

How sweet it is when the strong are also gentle!