Quotes About Compassion

How ethical is it to let these animals go a long time before they die?

If destructive technology amplifies violence, constructive technology amplifies compassion, and the lessons of technology are universal.

Such a choice—to tolerate the brutalization of children as we continue to do—is equally violent and equally evil, and we reap what we sow.

said that when it happened, the French would pray for the victims, the British would organize their rescue, and the Americans would pay for

We saw people -- they were so far away but we knew they were people, they were not cinders or the leaves of calendars; we saw people who had no alternatives but to consign their bodies -- their bodies, I say, but I mean their lives -- to the air, people who are loved, I believe, by God, even as I believe their murderers are loved by God. Falling.

When we fail we are merely joining the great parade of humanity that has walked ahead of us and will follow after us.

If unconditional love, loyalty, and obedience are the tickets to an eternal life, then my black Labrador, Venus, will surely be there long before me, along with all the dear animals in nature who care for their young at great cost to themselves and have suffered so much at the hands of humans.

Pain and suffering that are not transformed are usually projected onto others.

I have often wondered why people never want to put a stone monument of the Eight Beatitudes on a courthouse lawn. Then I realize that the Eight Beatitudes of Jesus would probably not be very good for any war, any macho worldview, the wealthy, or our consumer economy.

It is not that suffering or failure might happen, or that it will only happen to you if you are bad (which is what religious people often think), or that it will happen to the unfortunate, or to a few in other places, or that you can somehow by cleverness or righteousness avoid it. No, it will happen, and to you! Losing, failing, falling, sin, and the suffering that comes from those experiences—all of this is a necessary and even good part of the human journey.

Failure and suffering are the great equalizers and levelers among humans. Success is just the opposite. Communities and commitment can form around suffering much more than around how wonderful or superior we are.

If something comes toward you with grace and can pass through you and toward others with grace, you can trust it as the voice of God.

It is hardly an exaggeration to say that "us-and-them" seeing, and the dualistic thinking that results, is the foundation of almost all discontent and violence in the world.

We do not handle suffering. Suffering handles us.

Frankly, Jesus came to show us how to be human much more than how to be spiritual, and the process still seems to be in its early stages.

The significance of Jesus' wounded body is his deliberate and conscious holding of the pain of the world and refusing to send it elsewhere. The wounds were not necessary to convince God that we were loveable; the wounds are to convince us of the path and price of transformation. They are what will happen to you if you face and hold sin in compassion instead of projecting it in hatred.

The Church, as Jesus seems to be defining it, is the gathering of accepted brokenness. It's not the gathering of the saved.

There is no way to peace. Peace is the way. There is no path toward love except by practicing love. War will always produce more war. Violence can never bring about true peace.

you are often most gifted to heal others precisely where you yourself were wounded, or wounded others.

Amazing that we made Jesus into the consummate answer giver because that is not what he usually does. He more often leads us right onto the horns of our own human-made dilemmas, where we are forced to meet God and be honest with ourselves. He creates problems for us more than resolves them, problems that very often cannot be resolved by all-or-nothing thinking but only by love and forgiveness.

Francis's starting place was human suffering instead of human sinfulness

forgiveness always heals; it does not matter whether you are Hindu, Buddhist, Catholic or Jewish. Forgiveness is one of the patterns that is always true, it is part of The Story. There is no specifically Catholic way to feed the hungry or to steward the earth.

Listen to his dangerous and inclusionary thinking: "My Father's sun shines on the good and the bad, his rain falls on the just and the unjust" (Matthew 5:45). Or "Don't pull out the weeds or you might pull out the wheat along with it. Let the weeds and the wheat both grow together until the harvest" (Matthew 13:29–30). If I had presented such fuzzy thinking in my moral theology class, I would have gotten an F!

Did you ever notice that Jesus himself was not really that upset at the bad behavior that most of us call sin? Instead, he directed his critical attention toward people who did not think they were sinners, who could not see their own shadows or dark sides, or acknowledge their complicity in the world's domination systems.