Quotes About Compassion

In evangelical-speak, this is meeting people where they are. But I would add the following caveat: we must meet people where they are without a desire to change them into our image of what they should be.

The Christian is responsible to care for the hurting and the downtrodden, and should not be in the business of creating further pain.

Death of a wife is the biggest Silent Treatment you'll ever receive, so be good to her.

One of his central commands is a commonplace of ancient philosophy, and is a conclusion at which most world religions eventually arrive: 'whatever you wish that men would do to you, do so to them' – what has come to be known as the Golden Rule.18

You listen to people, you listen so deeply that you can hear their past lives, The crackle of their funeral pyres,

Just as the prisoner was being strapped into the electric chair, the priest said, "Son, is there anything I can do for you?" The prisoner said, "Yeah, when they pull the switch, hold my hand."

To be fully human has little to do with always being the centre of attention, getting your way and having all your ambitions met. To be fully human is to be like Christ, to 'count others better than yourselves' (Phil 2:13)...It takes rare strength to treat others as more important than yourself.

Dick Van Patten

And he said, This schoolroom is an immense town, and in it there are a million inhabitants, and only five-and-twenty are starved to death in the streets, in the course of a year. What is your remark on that proportion? And my remark was- for I couldn't think of a better one- that I thought it must be just as hard upon those who were starved , whether the others were a million, or a million million.

Are there no prisons?

Chez nous c'est comme les bêtes, et c'est normal : on s'entraide quand on est là, et quand il y a un blessé on l'achève, dans l'intérêt de la communauté.

Mais je n'ai jamais su être égoïste longtemps – peut-être parce que je n'ai rien à défendre. J'ai

There remains an experience of incomparable value. We have for once learned to see the great events of world history from below, from the perspective of the outcasts, the suspects, the maltreated in short, from the perspective of those who suffer. Mere waiting and looking on is not Christian behavior. Christians are called to compassion and to action.

We must learn to regard people less in light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer.

If you do a good job for others, you heal yourself at the same time, because a dose of joy is a spiritual cure.

I can no longer condemn or hate a brother for whom I pray, no matter how much trouble he causes me.

Nothing can be more cruel than the leniency which abandons others to their sin. Nothing can be more compassionate than the severe reprimand which calls another Christian in one's community back from the path of sin.

The Church is the Church only when it exists for others...not dominating, but helping and serving. It must tell men of every calling what it means to live for Christ, to exist for others.

If my sinfulness appears to me to be in any way smaller or less detestable in comparison with the sins of others, I am still not recognizing my sinfulness at all. ... How can I possibly serve another person in unfeigned humility if I seriously regard his sinfulness as worse than my own?

The will of God, to which the law gives expression, is that men should defeat their enemies by loving them.

Christian love draws no distinction between one enemy and another, except that the more bitter our enemy's hatred, the greater his need of love. Be his enmity political or religious, he has nothing to expect from a follower of Jesus but unqualified love. In such love there is not inner discord between the private person and official capacity. In both we are disciples of Christ, or we are not Christians at all.

The Christian must treat his enemy as a brother, and requite his hostility with love. His behavior must be determined not by the way others treat him, but by the treatment he himself receives from Jesus; it has only one source, and that is the will of Jesus.

No sacrifice which a lover would make for his beloved is too great for us to make for our enemy.

Bless them that persecute you.' If our enemy cannot put up with us any longer and takes to cursing us, our immediate reaction must be to lift up our hands and bless him. Our enemies are the blessed of the Lord. Their curse can do us no harm. May their poverty be enriched with all the riches of God, with the blessing of Him whom they seek to oppose in vain. We are ready to endure their curses so long as they redound to their blessing.