“A compassionate kind can see the animal as a living being, as a friend, as a family, as soul,
as an expression of life. Be compassionate.”
“I beg you, alight and join your sorrow with mine: misfortune wanders everywhere, and settles now upon one and now upon another.”
Source: Prometheus Bound
“Self-compassion is like a muscle. The more we practice flexing it, especially when life doesn’t go exactly according to plan (a frequent scenario for most of us), the stronger and more resilient our compassion muscle becomes.”
Source: Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection
“The soft heart is not a thing to harden but a treasure to protect. For soft hearts extend mercy, compassion, refuge, and God’s redemption to the world.”
Source: Slaying Dragons: Quotes, Poetry, & a Few Short Stories for Every Day of the Year
“With mindfulness, loving kindness, and self-compassion, we can begin to let go of our expectations about how life and those we love should be.”
Source: Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection
“This is the basis, and I am not being tried for whether I am a Communist, I am being tried for fighting for the right of my people, who are still second-class citizens in this United States of America”
“It is awareness of both our shared pain and our longing for happiness that links us to other people and helps us to turn toward them with compassion.”
Source: Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection
“Our can-do culture has made many of us believe that we should always be self-sufficient. Somewhere along the way, we also got the message that asking for help is a sign of weakness. We often forget that we’re interdependent creatures whose very existence depends on the kindness of others, including—with a bow to Tennessee Williams—strangers.”
Source: Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection
“I always understood the idea of the ultimate redeemer, Christ on the cross. But now I was beginning to see that this is something that is carried out in every one of us, that the purity of unearned suffering is a holy and affective thing It affects not only ourselves, but it touches and changes those around us as well. It opens us and those around us to a force beyond ourselves, a force that is right and moral, the force of righteous truth that is at the basis of human conscience. Suffering puts us and those around us in touch with our consciences. It opens and touches our hearts. It makes us feel compassion when we need to and guilt if we must.”
“Sadness is like sandpaper; it rubs at our sharper edges, softening and humbling us, making us ready for a coat of compassion.”
Source: Slaying Dragons: Quotes, Poetry, & a Few Short Stories for Every Day of the Year