Quotes About Compassion

He had loads of colleagues, acquaintances, buddies. He was an emotional communist. Everyone counted equally, but none too much.

the four sentences that lead to wisdom. I'm sorry. I was wrong. I need help. I don't know.

It was no use telling her he understood. Or that it was all right. She'd earned the right to no easy answer.

That was why she was happy. He now knew that happiness and kindness went together. There was not one without the other.

Good hearts get hurt. Good hearts get broken, Armand. And then they lash out.

She'd wanted to run an inn. To welcome people, to mother them. They had no children of their own, and she had a powerful need to nurture.

She suspected if they looked in Gamache's bedside table, they'd find all sorts of lost souls he put there for safekeeping. And maybe a baguette.

Anyone could be clever. Anyone could be smart. Anyone could be taught. But not everyone was kind." Chapter 1 · Page 10 · Location 202

People instinctively let down their guard when they saw a limp, an illness, a flaw in someone else. Not out of compassion but because it made them feel superior. Stronger. Those people, Gamache knew, did not always last long. It was not a useful instinct.

he'd come to agree with Sister Prejean that no one was as bad as the worst thing they'd done.

Armand Gamache had seen the worst. But he'd also seen the best. Often in the same person.

Irene Finney filled the void with a child not loved then lost, but first lost, then loved.

conscience is not necessarily a good thing. How many gays are beaten, how many abortion clinics bombed, how many blacks lynched, how many Jews murdered, by people just following their conscience?

Kindness beats cruelty.

But never, ever mistake kindness for weakness.

Ruth lost her footing. Haniya grabbed her before she fell. She held Ruth's hand for the rest of the way, and wondered if maybe the key was not in being held, but in holding.

Some might argue that Three Pines itself isn't real, and they'd be right, but limited in their view. The village does not exist, physically. But I think of it as existing in ways that are far more important and powerful. Three Pines is a state of mind. When we choose tolerance over hate. Kindness over cruelty. Goodness over bullying. When we choose to be hopeful, not cynical. Then we live in Three Pines.

And as he felt the final beat of Sonny's heart Gamache had had the impression it wasn't that his old heart had stopped but that Sonny had finally given it all away.

I've been treating you with courtesy and respect because that's the way I choose to treat everyone. But never, ever mistake kindness for weakness.

Though dour and childless himself, the grocer was unfailingly kind and patient with children. As though instead of having none, he had them all.

Things were pretty dire when Ruth was the healing agent.

Do no harm was part of Hippocrates's writing, but from a different text. On epidemics.

You have one hour to live. Who is it, exactly, you have needed all these years to forgive?" Myrna

I know how precious life is. You had no right to take Renaud's and you have no right to take your own now. Not over this. Too much death. It needs to stop.