Quotes About Compassion

Life is so hard. I see it everywhere. I see the homeless people on the street. I see how tragically humans have hurt the earth. How terribly they hurt each other. I also know how lucky I was. I would take my privilege for granted.

I think that if you were somehow able to measure the weight of human kindness, it would have weighed more on 9/11 than it ever had.

It's been said of me that I know how to love well, if any person alive can possess such knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us. It is all such a blessing—in the beginning, and the end, and the during.

We often believe the truest measure of a relationship is the ability to lay ourselves bare. But there's something to be said for parading your plumage as well, finding truth as much in the silly as the severe. Your humor is your compass and your shield. You can hone it into a weapon or you can pull its strands out to make your very own cotton-candy blanket. You can't exist on a diet of humor alone, but you can't exist on a diet without it, either.

I remind myself that I don't need to know everything, that there will always be essential rooms within us that will be unknown. I loosen my idea of him, and he becomes recognisable again.

One of the towers has fallen. When it's our turn to leave, it's like something in me is finally willing to listen, and suddenly I understand what it means. The tower doesn't exist anymore. Something I've seen my entire life - something so much larger than my entire life - is gone. That is my first reaction. And then I think about all the people inside. There must have been people inside.

At one point they'd repeated everything enough, and I wanted to tell them to stop showing the planes hitting the tower. We didn't need to see it again. And yet I didn't turn it off. Because I was hanging on every minute, wanting to be there when whatever was going to happen next actually happened.

I wondered if this was how you'd felt. I wondered if I was making myself feel how you'd felt. I knew it wasn't a choice. It was just what my mind was doing. Although I could've been fighting it more.

This is how we understand. We wore your flaws. We wore your fears. We made your mistakes.

Every night I pray for a lovely, swoopy-haired homosexual to come to our school, in the same way that Margaret prayed for boobs and my grandfather prays for my eternal salvation.

I wish she could see how it hits him. The look on his face, his life caving in. Because then maybe she'd realize, if only for a split second, that even though the world doesn't matter to her, she matters to the world.

I'd been hurt, yes—but I'd never meant to become hurtful. I didn't want to close down anyone but myself.

It doesn't work," she continues, unclasping her hands, smoothing her skirt. "What you're feeling right now doesn't work. You can't wander around and think the wandering will call them back. Believe me. I know you don't want to hear the long view, but let me tell you. You are so young. I know it's none of my business. But still.

Did I think that by making you rational about one thing, I could make you rational about everything? Maybe. Or maybe I just wanted to save you from your fears.

I cried because I am starting to realize that to love someone, to really love them deeply, is to want them to be family.

Elijah, as always, is being unusually kind. While he himself is not lonely, he doesn't mind talking to lonely people. He is the Mother Teresa of banter.

i think the idea of a 'mental health day' was invented by people who have no clue what it's like to have bad mental health

You need to love him. I don't care who you thought he was, or who you want him to be, you need to love him exactly as he is because your son is a remarkable human being. You have to understand that.

When people say love is blind, they act like that's a good thing. But some people find their way around in the darkness a little better than others.

I know part of knowing someone is being mean to them or whatever.

That has to be what love is--seeing what a mess he is and loving him anyway, because you know you're a mess, too, maybe even worse.

You shouldn't have venture deep down in order to get love.

I truly don't understand any of this,' I confessed. She stayed standing, facing me. 'I wish I could help you there,' she told me. 'But I can't.

I found the strength to see her, to cheer her, to not look away. It was taking a toll, but it was a toll I willingly paid.