Quotes About Compassion

Lately, Nastoyna felt that she had no right to criticize anyone at all -- no man, no animal, no bird, because each lived his own life, which was not in his control and which he could not change.

On the contrary, good deed is altruistic and confident of its own quiet but wonder-working power. And if, after many years, a person's past good deed comes back to him from a different quarter, this means it has made the rounds of that many more people and the circle of its effect has grown that much wider.

People shy away from messed-up people. They don't want to be burdened.

To do carefully and constantly and kindly many little things is not a little thing. Rosemary Curtis Neider

Once I got over the belief that I didn't have a right to explore my life when there were many other people in the world experiencing greater suffering than I could imagine, I stepped onto the path that would truly allow me to change.

Gwen, a woman with BPD, talks about her inability to decipher the world around her. "On the day I was born, all the newborn babies got on a line to meet God and to get their How to Act in All Situations Throughout Life book. When it was my turn, God had run out of the book. Ever since that day, I have been looking over other people's shoulders so that I could read their book and know how to act.

This painful mental illness is not fair, but saying it is not fair does not change anything. Thinking that you should not have to work so hard to get through everyday life with someone with BPD does not change the fact that this is what you need to do.

It is a grave mistake to think that the Inquisition or the Southern lynchings or the Rwandan genocide were committed by people who were fundamentally different from us. Soul-scarred Vietnam veterans have tried repeatedly to tell us: You don't know what you're capable of until you are there. Only when all of us recognize our own potential for evil, do we have some power to guard against it.

more mouths to feed. And no wonder Mother had been short-tempered today. When she said that even though it was nobody's fault, they were still in

It's important to help both friends and strangers when times are hard.

I do not expect from someone what they will not or cannot give me.

I feel that there's nothing more genuinely artistic than to love people.

Find the Grace in the things you can't change, and help somebody if you can.

It is not the magnitude of the gift that matters but the magnitude of the heart that offers it.

If they had a social gospel in the days of the prodigal son, somebody would have given him a bed and a sandwich and he never would have gone home.

The Saturday Review is not a church paper. It's a secular paper. But, the other day, it said, "The desensitization of 20th century man is more than a danger to the general safety. There are some things we have no business ever getting used to.

Sometimes our greatest tragedies become the greatest gifts we can give back to the world.

Poems help to keep human beings actually responding as human beings to the sufferings of others.

We do terrible things to the ones we love. We cheat and lie and betray them, for thirty pieces of silver or our own selfish hearts. The only way love endures is because of one simple gift. Forgiveness.

When I talk to people about what makes us human, some people say it's our tears. Because we are the only ones who weep, only we can feel true sorrow. When I hear this, I remember Isiro's face, her anguished eyes as she cried for Mikeno, how she screamed at the keepers with her teeth bared and pushed at the poles. How she dashed back to his body and dug her fingers into his chest as if the strength of her grip could bring him back. There is sorrow without tears. Of course there is.

Any leader who doesn't support the heart of evolving humanity is not a leader worthy of being followed.

The only sins are violations of love.

My mother used poetry and the arts as a thermometer—if I cried, it meant my heart had not grown cold, my sensibility was alive and well.

The people knew what had made them human; it was not their shortcomings, but their hearts.