Quotes About Compassion

You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.

What does one say to someone who has just been diagnosed with such a dire illness?

I gave people who didn't know what to say the best advice I could muster, which was that it was better to say anything rather than pretend that nothing was wrong.

If every single person in this room made it a rule that wherever you are, whenever you can, you will try to act a little kinder than is necessary—the world really would be a better place.

Often we feel the need to say that a book isn't just about a particular time or place but is about the human spirit. People say this of Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, or Night by Elie Wiesel, or A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah.

Halpern wants the reader to think about the difference between asking "How are you feeling?" and "Do you want me to ask how you're feeling?

one character thought, was that they'd never had love and patience at the same time.

Mom's reaction to this chaos isn't a surprise. No matter how high the bill that she is paying or that Medicare is paying for her, she will say to me or herself: "What happens to all the people who can't afford this? It's just not fair." Universal

Universal health care was always an issue Mom cared about, and the more care she got, the angrier she became that good medicine wasn't available for everyone in the United States. The pharmacy almost always provoked a political discussion or diatribe.

Not feeling well is no excuse for forgetting that there are other people in the world.

But I do want you to look after each other. I'll be very cross if I hear that any of you are fighting. And if anyone causes trouble, I'll come back from the grave and get 'em.

I often forget that other people's stories aren't simply introductions to my own more engaging, more dramatic, more relevant, and better-told tales, but rather ends in themselves, tales I can learn from or repeat or dissect or savor.

The Etiquette of Illness

I was learning that when you're with someone who is dying, you may need to celebrate the past, live the present, and mourn the future all at the same time.

And there's something you can always tell people who want to learn more about the world and who don't know how to find a cause to support. You can always tell them to read.

We all want to be in love and find that person who is going to love us no matter how our feet smell, no matter how angry we get one day, no matter the things we say that we don't mean.

There is something about veganism that is not easy, but the difficulty is not inherent in veganism, but in our culture.

How could it ever be to our purpose to rob another living being of his or her purpose?

Cruelty to animals is as if man did not love God . . . there is something so dreadful, so satanic, in tormenting those who have never harmed us, and who cannot defend themselves, who are utterly in our power." —Cardinal John Henry Newman

As individuals and as a culture, our ability to heal, transform, and evolve beyond this old defiling mentality is tied to our food choices more than to anything else. To meditate for world peace, to pray for a better world, and to work for social justice and environmental protection while continuing to purchase the flesh, milk, and eggs of horribly abused animals exposes a disconnect that is so fundamental that it renders our efforts absurd, hypocritical, and doomed to certain failure.

As we free others, we become free; as we love others, we are loved; as we encourage others, we are encouraged; as we bless others, we are blessed; as we bring joy and healing to others, we find joy and healing in our lives.

I have seen groups of people overcome incredible odds as they became aware they are participating in a cause beyond self and sense the movement of the inexorable which comes from unity. Violence is not inevitable. War is not inevitable. Nonviolence and peace are inevitable. We can make of this world a gift of peace which will confirm the presence of universal spirit in our lives. We can send into the future the gift which will protect our children from fear, from harm, from destruction.11

By denying the intelligence in animals, ignoring their extensive abilities to feel and to live as subjects in their own ways in the natural world, we have made our culture and ourselves less intelligent.

Don´t be a dick