Quotes About Compassion

At the same time, the daughters, in adulthood, must also make the effort to really know their mothers—which many daughters do not—in order to understand what forces shaped those mothers. These daughters need to discover what torment may have unwittingly informed their mothers' parental choices, and to see their mothers as composites of strengths and weaknesses, rather than as all good or all bad.

Realizing our society as it is, without theology dogmatically telling us how we should react to it, and being humane toward that society, that is all that we're sure of.

Remember that the best medical treatment is a sense of relativism. No matter how badly you might feel, take comfort in knowing there's someone who feels much worse.

That is what revolutionaries do. We sacrifice ourselves to save others.

My weakness for sympathizing with others has much to do with my status as a bastard, which is not to say that being a bastard naturally predisposes one to sympathy. Many bastards behave like bastards, and I credit my gentle mother with teaching me the idea that blurring the lines between us and them can be a worthy behavior.

Whatever may be noble and heroic in war is found in us, and whatever is evil and horrific in war is also found in us.

Why were we hungry? my stomach cried. Even then I understood that if the rich could only spare all the hungry a bowl of rice, they would be less rich but they would not starve. If the solution was so simple, why was anyone hungry? Was it only a lack of sympathy?

My weakness for sympathizing with others has much to do with my status as a bastard, which is not to say that being a bastard naturally predisposes one to sympathy.

blurring the lines between us and them can be a worthy behavior. After

She was a poor person, I was her poor child, and no one asks poor people if they want war.

I need not look in the mirror or at the faces of my fellow men to find a likeness to God. I need only look at their selves and inside my own to realize we would not be killers if God Himself was not one, too.

One must listen to them carefully to understand that while pain is universal, it is also utterly private. We

I will always be on the side of those who have nothing and who are not even allowed to enjoy the nothing they have in peace,

Even if refugees, undocumented immigrants, and legal immigrants are not all potential billionaires, that is no reason to exclude them. Even if their fate is to be the high-school dropout and the fast-food cashier, so what? That makes them about as human as the average American, and we are not about to deport the average American (are we?).

Although he could have shot me or turned us back, he did what I gambled every honorable man forced to take a bribe would do. He let us all pass, holding up his end of the bargain as the last fig leaf of his dignity. I averted my eyes from his humiliation.

Perhaps forgiveness is overrated,

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. That sounds good, but things are never that simple. The problem, you see, is how to know what we want to have done to us.

Even then I understood that if the rich could only spare all the hungry a bowl of rice, they would be less rich but they would not starve.

blurring the lines between us and them can be a worthy behavior.

But what is more revolutionary than helping one's enemy and his kin? What is more radical than forgiveness?

I could not help but feel moved by the plight of these poor people. Perhaps it was not correct, politically speaking, for me to feel sympathy for them, but my mother would have been one of them if she were alive. She was a poor person, I was her poor child, and no one asks poor people if they want war.

We wanted love, peace, and justice, except for our enemies, whom we wanted to burn in Hell, preferably for eternity.

Be kind. It's worthwhile to make an effort to learn about other people and figure out what you might have in common with them.

The greatest blessing in life is to BE a Blessing to others.