“Compassion asks us to go where it hurts, to enter into the places of pain, to share in brokenness, fear, confusion, and anguish. Compassion challenges us to cry out with those in misery, to mourn with those who are lonely, to weep with those in tears. Compassion requires us to be weak with the weak, vulnerable with the vulnerable, and powerless with the powerless. Compassion means full immersion in the condition of being human.”
– HENRI J.M. NOUWEN
“If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.”
-DALAI LAMA XIV
“Compassion is the sometimes fatal capacity for feeling what it is like to live inside somebody else’s skin. It’s the knowledge that there can never really be any peace and joy for me until there is peace and joy finally for you too.”
-FREDERICK BUECHNER
“Compassion is a verb.”
-THÍCH NHAT HANH
Whatever God does, the first outburst is always compassion.”
-MEISTER ECKHART
“You know, the only time Christ is judgmental is on the subject of the poor. ‘As you have done it unto the least of these my brethren, you have done it unto me (Matthew 25:40)’. As I say, good news to the poor.”
-BONO