Quotes About Compassion

Perhaps tragedies are only tragedies in the presence of love, which confers meaning to loss.

People say you should give until it hurts. I say you should give until it stops hurting. Know what I mean?

It is such a terrifying thing to see a man cry.

You must never check for a person's pulse using your thumb, or you'll feel your own heartbeat. Actually, I plan on doing that if I'm the one who's here when Ruth dies. I plan on giving her my heartbeat before I let her go.

Oh. maybe little kids are trouble, sometimes, but only for a good reason: They are tired. They are hungry. They are afraid. He supposes a great many ills of adults might be cured by a nap or a good meal or a bit of timely reassurance. But adults complicate everything. They are by nature complicators. They learned to make things harder than they need to be and they learned to talk way too much.

aging means the abandonment of criticism and the taking on of compassionate acceptance.

Did she ever think of that, that things experienced in ways different from hers were equally valuable? That the way that he chose to love her was, in fact, loving her, that the face of love depended on the person giving it?

The person with the bleeding finger doesn't hurt less for the person next to him with the bleeding arm.

We forget how ready people are to help. You can talk all you want about the evil spirit of man. But I don't think it's true. I think most of us are just dying to be good. And one way we can do that is to forgive the bad in others as well as in ourselves. I don't say don't hold people accountable. Help them be accountable. But to say those words to yourself or another? 'I forgive you'? Most powerful words in the world.

How is it that we dare to honk at others in traffic, when we know nothing about where they have just come from or what they are on their way to?

What mattered was that at the end, someone who loved her sat by her, saying, I see you. I

We're all trapped in a body with limitations, even the most able-bodied among us! And we're all guided by minds with limitations of their own. You want to know my philosophy? It's this: Our job, regardless of our bodily circumstances is to rise above what holds us down, and to help others do the same.

What mattered was that at the end, someone who loved her sat by her, saying, I see you.

You know what? That woman's pain being greater than yours doesn't make your pain any less. She deserves the best we can offer, and so do you. Now roll over and hike up your johnnie.

It's funny how, oftentimes, the people you love the most are given the least margin for error.

But finally my own version of God came to me in a dream, complete with a name: Corambe. He was a warm and compassionate being with a tender and unwavering regard for me. He had the humanity of Jesus and the radiant beauty of the angel Gabriel. He was graceful and poetic and ever attentive to my feelings. And though he was a male, he nonetheless dressed oftentimes in women's clothes.

Japanese tea ceremony; a way of honoring oneself by putting another's needs first, the joy that could be found in intimate service...A conversation we'd had one night on the way home from a movie. I remember that night he'd put toothpaste on my brush before his own, then bowed, I smiled, but I'd understood too that such small gifts were one seed that blossomed in two hearts.

Lincoln sits on the chair and removes his shoes. Then he climbs in bed beside his mother, who does not respond. Jason hopes no one comes in and tells Lincoln to get off the bed. Because he would have to kill that person. He sits in the chair and watches as Lincoln touches his mother's hand, then holds it. The puppy has a name, he tells her. Nothing. Lincoln moves closer to Abby and closes his eyes.

Elizabeth Berg

he was learning a lot about the kind of loneliness some people endured. He

her heart has opened.

I would like to step into the body of a woman whose insides don't feel as though they have been spending time against the fine side of a cheese grater.

Women do not leave situations like this: we push up our sleeves, lean in closer, and say, What do you need? Tell me what you need and by God I will do it. I believe that the souls of women flatten and anchor themselves in times of adversity, lay in for the stay. I've heard that when elephants are attacked they often run, not away, but toward each other. Perhaps it is because they are a matriarchal society.

Arthur thinks that, above all, aging means the abandonment of criticism and the taking on of compassionate acceptance