Quotes about Compassion

Reader! Are you with the man-stealers in sympathy and purpose, or on the side of their down-trodden victims? If with the former, then you are the foe of God and man.

She stands — she sits — she staggers — she falls — she groans — she dies — and there are none of her children or grandchildren present, to wipe from her wrinkled brow the cold sweat of death, or to place beneath the sod her fallen remains.

I esteem myself a good, persistent hater of injustice and oppression, but my resentment ceases when they cease, and I have no heart to visit upon children the sins of their fathers.

I am no minister of malice. I would not strike the fallen. I would not repel the repentant, but may my "right hand forget her cunning, and my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth," if I forget the difference between the parties to that terrible, protracted, and bloody conflict.

Broken things are precious. We eat broken bread because we share in the depth of our Lord and His broken life. Broken flowers give perfume. Broken incense is used in adoration. A broken ship saved Paul and many other passengers on their way to Rome. Sometimes the only way the good Lord can get into some hearts is to break them.

The day that man forgets that love is identical with sacrifice, he will ask how a God of love could demand mortification and self-denial.

As the mother knows the needs better than the babe, so the Blessed Mother understands our cries and worries and knows them better than we know ourselves.

Love is a vicarious principle. A mother suffers for and with her sick child, as a patriot suffers for his country. No wonder that the Son of Man visited this dark, sinful, wretched earth by becoming Man - Christ's unity with the sinful was due to His love! Love burdens itself with the wants and woes and losses and even the wrongs of others.

The more He loved those for whom He was the ransom, the more His anguish would increase, as it is the faults of friends rather than enemies which most disturb hearts!

Love begins when duty finishes. It is a giving of the cloak when the coat is taken. It is walking the extra mile.

The very word mercy is derived from the Latin miserum cor, a sorrowful heart. Mercy is, therefore, a compassionate understanding of another's unhappiness.

Hunger is not just an economic problem. It is a moral and spiritual problem.