Quotes About Compassion

You must break away from all the rules of selfishness and make sharing as your new motto in marriage.

You must, therefore, know your limits of self-defence; so as not to cross the line of mercy and forgiveness.

You will begin to love one another, in the name of humanity.

Your doubt about loving someone shouldn't become your excuse for acting heartless towards those you meet along the way.

Your eyes are a bonus in love. Love does not discriminate against the blind.

when we share our sorrow, our sorrow is halved, and when we share our joy, our joy is doubled.

Love is an ongoing debt that we owe each other, a debt that should never be paid off. Paul made this clear when he wrote to the believers in Rome, "Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his fellowman has fulfilled the law" (Rom. 13:8). If we get into the habit of thinking of ourselves as always owing a debt of love to our spouses, we will be less inclined to take offense when they say or do something that we do not like.

by knowing a few people well, I know the whole world, for human nature is the same the world over and does not change. Having only a drop of water, a microscope, and a dream, I fashion from it the sea. I know it, perhaps, as he does not, who only crosses it in a ship.

Have you ever seen a man carry a burden when there were woman's shoulders near enough to shift it to?

Wouldn't this old world be better If the folks we meet would say: 'I know something good about you,' And then treat us that way?

There is no wisdom without love.

we have developed a corollary that is neither love nor forgiveness—namely, tolerance. The problem with this is clear: I can "tolerate" you without it costing me anything very much. I can shrug my shoulders, walk away, and leave you to do your own thing. That, admittedly, is preferable to my taking you by the throat and shaking you until you agree with me. But it is certainly not love.

When God wants to sort out the world, as the Beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount make clear, he doesn't send in the tanks. He sends in the meek, the broken, the justice hungry, the peacemakers, the pure-hearted and so on.

the line between good and evil does not lie between "us" and "them," between the West and the rest, between Left and Right, between rich and poor. That fateful line runs down the middle of each of us, every human society, every individual.

The line between justice and injustice, between things being right and things not being right, can't be drawn between "us" and "them." It runs right down through the middle of each one of us.

The question for us, as we learn again and again the lessons of hope for ourselves, is how we can be for the world what Jesus was for Thomas: how we can show to the world the signs of love, how we can reach out our hands in love, wounded though they will be if the love has been true, how we can invite those whose hearts have grown shrunken and shriveled with sorrow and disbelief to come and see what love has done, what love is doing, in our communities, our neighborhoods:

To hope for a better future in this world—for the poor, the sick, the lonely and depressed, for the slaves, the refugees, the hungry and homeless, for the abused, the paranoid, the downtrodden and despairing, and in fact for the whole wide, wonderful, and wounded world—is not something else, something extra, something tacked on to the gospel as an afterthought.

That is our vocation: to be in prayer, perhaps wordless prayer, at the point where the world is in pain.

The Christian role, as part of naming the name of the crucified and risen Jesus on territory presently occupied by idols, is to speak the truth to power and especially to speak up for those with no power at all.

Art is love creating new worlds; justice is love rolling up its sleeves to heal the old one.

He might have been a wafer in the hands Of priests this day, or music from the lips: Of red-robed choristers, instead he slips Away from church, shakes off our linen bands To don his apron with a nurse: he grips And lifts a stretcher, soothes with gentle hands The frail flesh of the dying, gives them hope, Breathes with the breathless, lends them strength to cope.

How would you describe a mature person?

we recognize that the world as a whole needs, longs for, aches and yearns and cries out for forgiveness—for that collective, global sigh of relief that means that nobody need seek vengeance ever again; that nobody will bear a grudge ever again; that the million wrongs with which the world has been so horribly defaced will be put right at last;

You cannot rescue someone from the scars of an abusive upbringing by replaying the same narrative on a cosmic scale and mouthing the word "love" as you do so.