Gentleness is akin to divinity. Perhaps no quality is so far removed from all that is coarse, brutal and selfish as gentleness, so that when one is becoming gentle, he is becoming divine.

She's not mean. She's just hurt. An animal that's gentle and friendly growls when it's injured. Remember that when people act ugly toward you. They're usually in some kind of pain.

I can spend 10 to 15 minutes with someone, and they can tell me what they're going through. I may never have gone through that, but I get it on a really deep level.

I am alarmed by the violence that women do to one another: professional violence, competitive violence, emotional violence. I am alarmed by the willingness of women to enslave other women. I am alarmed by a growing absence of decency on the killing floor of professional women's worlds.

Truth is a deep kindness that teaches us to be content in our everyday life and share with the people the same happiness.

I want a kinder, gentler nation.

Today we affirm a new commitment to live out our nation's promise through civility, courage, compassion and character.

How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because some day in life you will have been all of these.

A man does not have to be an angel in order to be a saint.

More helpful than all wisdom is one draught of simple human pity that will not forsake us.

A book or poem which has no pity in it had better not be written.

Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.