Quotes about Compassion

As a general rule, I would say that human beings never behave more badly toward one another than when they believe they are protecting God. In the words of Arun Gandhi, grandson of Mohandas, "People of the Book risk putting the book above people.

When this young priest received my news with grace instead of anger, he reminded me that salvation is not something that happens only at the end of a person's life. Salvation happens every time someone with a key uses it to open a door he could lock instead.

If Jesus meant for his followers to rule the world, then why did he teach them to wash feet?

I had refused the body and blood of Christ because it was painful to the person beside me. I had chosen to abstain with him rather than to participate without him. Though I knew full well that he did not expect that of me - that it was possible for a full-fledged Christian and a full-fledged Jew to stand together in their difference - at that moment I did not want to celebrate any Communion that did not include him.

I am not sure whether the virtue of holy envy requires holy humility or creates it, but the two are clearly related. After you have allowed the other to define herself, listening carefully to all the ways in which she is not you, it is hard to overlook the fact that you and she are made of the same basic material. You are dust, and to dust you shall return.

Here is a law as reliable as gravity: The degree to which we believe our faith is makes us human is the same degree with which we will question the humanity of those who do not share our faith.

Here is a law as reliable as gravity: the degree to which we believe our faith is what makes us human is the same degree to which we will question the humanity of those who do not share our faith.

If someone walks by or speaks to you, you may find that your power of attentiveness extends to this person as well. Even if you do not know him, you may be able to see his soul too, the one he thinks he has so carefully covered up. There is something he is working on in his life, the same way you are working on something. Can you see it in his face? You are related, even if you do not know each other's names.

Handing out free food and clothes was a charitable act. Approaching the powers was a political act.

The problem is that people we cannot stand are loved just as much as we are, by a God with an upsetting sense of community.

The only clear line I draw these days is this: when my religion tries to come between me and my neighbor, I will choose my neighbor. That self-canceling feature of my religion is one of the things I like best about it. Jesus never commanded me to love my religion.

However you define the problematic present-day stranger—the religious stranger, the cultural stranger, the transgendered stranger, the homeless stranger—scripture's wildly impractical solution is to love the stranger as the self.