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Quotes About Compassion

Without forgiveness, there's no future.
~ Desmond Tutu
The quality of human life on our planet is nothing more than the sum total of our daily interactions with one another. Each time we help, and each time we harm, we have a dramatic impact on our world.
~ Desmond Tutu
Forgiveness is the way we return what has been taken from us and restore the love and kindness and trust that has been lost. With each act of forgiveness, whether small or great, we move toward wholeness. Forgiveness is nothing less than how we bring peace to ourselves and our world.
~ Desmond Tutu
Each of us has the capacity to commit the wrongs against others that were committed against us. Although I might say, "I would never . . ." genuine humility will answer, "Never say never." Rather say, "I hope that, given the same set of circumstances, I would not . . ." But can we ever really know?
~ Desmond Tutu
If you are neutral in a situation of injustice you have chosen the side of the oppressor.
~ Desmond Tutu
We do not need to succumb to the temptation to meet such a violation with retaliation. The only way to heal this hurt is to give voice to what ails us. It is only in this way that we can keep our pain and loss from taking root inside us. It is only in this way that we have a chance for freedom.
~ Desmond Tutu
Forgiveness among the members of older generations could open the door to healthy and supportive relationships among younger generations.
~ Desmond Tutu
The Archbishop was pointing his index fingers at his head. "You learn when something happens that tests you." And then he was pretending to be speaking as God might. "'Hello, you said you wanted to be more compassionate.' 'Hello, you wanted to be a little more laid-back.
~ Desmond Tutu
as we say in our African idiom, a person is a person through other persons. To dehumanize another inexorably means that one is dehumanized as well.
~ Desmond Tutu
Ultimately, forgiveness is a choice we make, and the ability to forgive others comes from the recognition that we are all flawed and all human. We all have made mistakes and harmed others. We will again. We find it easier to practice forgiveness when we can recognize that the roles could have been reversed.
~ Desmond Tutu
Nuestra bondad crece cuando se le pone a prueba
~ Desmond Tutu
When we oppress others, we end up oppressing ourselves. All
~ Desmond Tutu
we choose to either walk the path of revenge and be bound to suffering, or take the path of forgiveness and be freed into healing.
~ Desmond Tutu
When we accept our own pain we can begin to see past it to the other person's woundedness. We can begin to consider that if we were in their shoes, if we stood inside their story, we might have done to others what they did to us.
~ Desmond Tutu
When we can accept both our humanity and the perpetrator's we can write a new story. One in which we are no longer cast as a victim, but a survivor, even perhaps a hero.
~ Desmond Tutu
Forgiveness is truly the grace by which we enable another person to get up, and get up with dignity, to begin anew.
~ Desmond Tutu
He made a powerful distinction between healing and curing: Curing involves the resolution of the illness but was not always possible. Healing, he said, was coming to wholeness and could happen whether or not the illness was curable.
~ Desmond Tutu
he would urge his compatriots to work for and which would form part of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission he was going to appoint to deal with our country's past. This man, who had been vilified and
~ Desmond Tutu
This is also a story about what a good thing it is to forgive— a relief to the one who did the bad thing, and a great relief to the one who gets to forgive!
~ Diana Abu-Jaber
Damaged children are all of the same tribe: I can look at any adult and recognize one instantly— we're everywhere. Lost childhood lingers like tribal scars— in an off-kilter smile or a look in the eye— there's always some sign.
~ Diana Abu-Jaber
You dinna need to understand me, Sassenach, he said quietly. So long as you love me.
~ Diana Gabaldon
Gentle he would be, denied he would not.
~ Diana Gabaldon
Sassenach, I've been stabbed, bitten, slapped, and whipped since supper - which I didna get to finish. I dinna like to scare children an I dinna like to flog men, and I've had to do both. I've two hundred English camped three miles away, and no idea what to do about them. I'm tired, I'm hungry, and I'm sore. If you've anything like womanly sympathy about ye, I could use a bit!
~ Diana Gabaldon
I gave you justice, it said, as I was taught it. And I gave you mercy , too, so far as I could. While I could not spare you pain and humiliation, I make you a gift of my own pains and humiliations, that yours might be easier to bear.
~ Diana Gabaldon