Quotes About Compassion

Weak people hold grudges, Mom. Strong people forgive.

What would it be like to live with a person capable of joy?

Clem didn't know a man who worked more passionately for social justice than his father, and when you really loved someone, the whole person, you simply accepted the little things you might have wished were different. He could see eyes being rolled when his father waxed religious at a fellowship meeting, but Becky herself rolled her eyes like that. It didn't mean she didn't love him.

In the New Testament, the only things that mattered were love and free will.

Cuando te quedas en tu habitación y te encolerizas o adoptas una actitud de desdén o te encoges de hombros, como hice muchos años, el mundo y sus problemas te intimidan de manera extraordinaria. Pero cuando sales y estableces una relación real con personas reales, o incluso con animales reales, existe el peligro muy real de acabar queriendo a alguno de ellos.

If you really want to change someone's mind on a moral or political matter, you'll need to see things from that person's angle as well as your own. And if you do truly see it the other person's way—deeply and intuitively—you might even find your own mind opening in response. Empathy is an antidote to righteousness, although it's very difficult to empathize across a moral divide.

People who know but do not act do evil too. I don't know if I would call them evil but they're certainly not thinking about heaven.

He who is tolerant to the intolerant, peaceful to the violent, who is free from greed, who speaks words that are calm, helpful, and true and that offend no one — him I call a brahmin.

People have to be patient when they're talking to a nervous person.

Zelmo was nearly bellowing by the time he raised his glass to the tables center. 'To the human heart!' Diners at other tables glanced to see what was the matter.

Vierte amor en las heridas.

Agli inizi della carriera ero così fesso da credere che il lavoro consistesse nell'individuare un colpevole tra la massa degli innocenti. In realtà si tratta casomai di trovare uno o due innocenti che meritano di essere salvati in mezzo alla massa dei cattivi.

Sometimes people say terrible things when they're scared. They don't mean to, but they can't help it. They lash out because if they can see that their words hurt someone else, it makes them feel as if they aren't completely powerless.

I don't ever want to live in a world where something like mercy...or maybe it's compassion...is the wrong choice.

She wept for the hurt that he owned, a hurt she could never hope to remove.

all the reasons people with serious mental illness were ignored: they don't contribute to society, they don't make money, they're difficult, they're disenfranchised—who's going to pay attention to them? Until something tragic happens; then it's a nightmare. This was the nightmare.

He did not believe that the one thousand deaths caused each year by people with unmedicated schizophrenia should indict the vast population of those suffering from the illness, but he did want to prevent those deaths, a greater number of suicides, a growing number of mentally ill homeless people, and a prison population swelled by people suffering from mental illness who received no care.

God does not want us to understand the suffering of the innocent but to fight for a world in which the innocent no longer suffer.

If we cannot create peace or justice or compassion within the family we will be unable to do so within the nation or the world. Not until Joseph forgives his brothers and is reconciled with them can the story move on to the larger canvas of history.

We need enormous pockets, pockets big enough for our families and our friends, and even the people who aren't on our lists, people we've never met but still want to protect. We need pockets for boroughs and for cities, a pocket that could hold the universe.

In bed that night I invented a special drain that would be underneath every pillow in New York, and would connect to the reservoir. Whenever people cried themselves to sleep, the tears would all go to the same place, and in the morning the weatherman could report if the water level of the Reservoir of Tears had gone up or down, and you could know if New York is in heavy boots.

Mom told me, "It probably gets pretty lonely to be Grandma, don't you think?" I told her, "It probably gets pretty lonely to be anyone.

We can't plead ignorance, only indifference. Those alive today are the generations that came to know better. We have the burden and the opportunity of living in the moment when the critique of factory farming broke into the popular consciousness. We are the ones of whom it will be fairly asked, What did you do when you learned the truth about eating animals?

there are only some many times you can utter It does not hurt before it begins to hurt even more than the hurt.