Quotes about Compassion

If God had bid you give them all your estates to own them, or lay down your lives to save them, sure you would have refused, when you will not bestow a little breath to save them? Is not the soul of a husband, or wife, or child, or neighbour, worth a few words? It is worth this, or it is worth nothing. . . . If you did know their misery, you would now do more to bring them out of hell (409). (III.XIII)

Pain and suffering that are not transformed are usually projected onto others.

It is not that suffering or failure might happen, or that it will only happen to you if you are bad (which is what religious people often think), or that it will happen to the unfortunate, or to a few in other places, or that you can somehow by cleverness or righteousness avoid it. No, it will happen, and to you! Losing, failing, falling, sin, and the suffering that comes from those experiences—all of this is a necessary and even good part of the human journey.

Failure and suffering are the great equalizers and levelers among humans. Success is just the opposite. Communities and commitment can form around suffering much more than around how wonderful or superior we are.

It is hardly an exaggeration to say that "us-and-them" seeing, and the dualistic thinking that results, is the foundation of almost all discontent and violence in the world.

We do not handle suffering. Suffering handles us.

Frankly, Jesus came to show us how to be human much more than how to be spiritual, and the process still seems to be in its early stages.

The significance of Jesus' wounded body is his deliberate and conscious holding of the pain of the world and refusing to send it elsewhere. The wounds were not necessary to convince God that we were loveable; the wounds are to convince us of the path and price of transformation. They are what will happen to you if you face and hold sin in compassion instead of projecting it in hatred.

The Church, as Jesus seems to be defining it, is the gathering of accepted brokenness. It's not the gathering of the saved.

There is no way to peace. Peace is the way. There is no path toward love except by practicing love. War will always produce more war. Violence can never bring about true peace.

I am not preoccupied with collecting more goods and services; quite simply, my desire and effort—every day—is to pay back, to give back to the world a bit of what I have received.

you are often most gifted to heal others precisely where you yourself were wounded, or wounded others.