Quotes about Compassion

conversion is no more spectacular than learning to love the people we live with and work among.

Who can be good, if not made so by loving? —St. Augustine

I often see it in people who have attained what the monastic tradition terms "detachment," an ability to live at peace with the reality of whatever happens. Such people do not have a closed-off air, nor a boastful demeanor. In them, it is clear, their wounds have opened the way to compassion for others. And compassion is the strength and soul of a religion.

The Bible—and human life itself—is full of evidence that religion itself can become an idol: what the sentimental call the love of God is nothing if it is short-circuited into private piety or religious self-righteousness and doesn't translate into compassion for others.

For some reason we human beings seem to learn best how to love when we're a bit broken, when our plans fall apart, when our myths of our self-sufficiency and goodness and safety are shattered.

My favorite definition of heaven comes from a Benedictine sister, who told me that as her mother lay dying in a hospital bed she had ventured to reassure her by saying, "In heaven, everyone we love is there." The older woman had replied, "No, in heaven I will love everyone who's there.

You have to have a spirit of LOVE---Even for your enemies.

I have learned now that while those who speak about one's miseries usually hurt, those who keep silence hurt more.

She's the sort of woman who lives for others - you can tell the others by their hunted expression.

Forgiving and being forgiven are two names for the same thing. The important thing is that a discord has been resolved.

Our prayers for others flow more easily than those for ourselves. This shows we are made to live by charity.

The real problem is not why some pious, humble, believing people suffer, but why some do not.