Quotes About Compassion

How can you have a peaceful country where one half of the population thinks that the other is wrong, or hostile, or determined to do them down? What better recipe for unhappiness was there than that?

Africa was full of people in need of help and there had to be a limit. You simply could not help everybody; but you could at least help those who came into your life. That principle allowed you to deal with the suffering you saw. That was your suffering. Other people would have to deal with the suffering that they, in their turn, came across.

Everybody who consulted her was, in their way, hurting--even this rich man with his big Mercedes-Benz and his expensive cuff-links. Human hurt was like lightning; it did not choose its targets, but struck, with rough equality and little regard to position, achievement, or moral desert.

When somebody does wrong, Emma, we must remember that that person is still a human being like the rest of us. We must not rush to throw the first stone. We must remind ourselves that all of us do wrong from time to time, unless we're saints, which we aren't.

When we dismiss or deny the hopes of others, she thought, we forget that they, like us, have only one chance in this life.

This had happened because she had been able to make that sudden imaginative leap that lies at the heart of our moral lives: the ability to see, even for a brief moment, the world as it is seen by the other person. It is this understanding that lies behind all kindness to others, all attempts to ameliorate the situation of those who suffer, all those acts of charity by which we make our lives something more than the pursuit of the goals of the unruly ego.

I am grateful to you for being who you are: for standing up for ladies with large glasses and a bad skin and for everybody else who has had to battle to get where they have got. And most of all I am grateful to you for being my friend, Mma; I am grateful to you for that. That is the best thing that anybody can be to anybody else--a friend.

It was not edifying to dwell on the failings of others.

Is it hard to raise an elephant?" It was some minutes before anybody answered. But then Debra said, "I don't think so, Mma. It's not hard to do anything if you do it with love.

It had always struck her as wrong that we should judge ourselves-or, more usually, others-by single acts, as if a single snapshot said anything about what a person had been like over the whole course of his life. It could say something, of course, but only if it was typical of how that person behaved; otherwise, no, all it said that at that moment, in those particular circumstances, temptation won a local victory.

but then where would one end if one started to compose a list of the wrongs that this world had seen? Better perhaps, thought Mma Ramotswe, to make a list of those things that were right with the world, of people who had made life better for other people, or who had done what they had been called to do with honour and without complaint. Her

But if you do not forgive, and you think all the time about getting even, or punishing somebody who has done you a wrong, what are you achieving?

There is no need to be unkind to people who are unhappy inside themselves. There is room for everyone. Everyone should be able to find somewhere on this earth to sit down.

Charlie had indeed done something stupid. But this realisation only made her want to defend him. Of course young men did stupid things—it was part of being a young man

To be free Is often to be lonely. He would unite The unequal moieties fractured By our own well-meaning sense of justice Would restore to the larger the wit and will The smaller possess but can only use For arid disputes, would give back to The son the mother's richness of feeling …

we must love those with whom we live and work, and love them for all their failings, manifest and manifold though they be.

There are many more kind people than not-so-kind people," said Mma Ramotswe.

The unmerited dislike of another made one think less of oneself. We are enlarged by the love of others; we are diminished by their dislike.

were prepared to shake their heads when they looked at other, unacceptable, people. It was hard work, shaking your head like that, but it had to be done—there was no way round it.

When you go home from work at the end of the day, you sit on your small veranda, watching the day turns to dusk, nursing a cup of redbush tea in your hands, and wonder what on earth you can possibly do to help. "The Saturday big tent wedding party " page 41

them that if we do not forgive then we run the risk of being eaten up with hatred inside

Mma Ramotswe had expected no thanks for what she had done. You helped other people—you just did. Had her van broken down, then she would have hoped that somebody would have done the same for her, and she thought that they would.

She could turn away and say that they had nothing to do with her, or she could accept that they had somehow touched her skirt. ...we all had a skirt, and those who touched our skirt became our concern.

You can't condemn the present for the wrongs of the past.