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Compassion is not sympathy. Compassion is mercy. It is a commitment to take responsibility for the suffering of others.

Joan D. Chittister

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Joan D. Chittister
Commitment
Compassion
Responsibility
Suffering
Others
Take
Sympathy
Mercy

More quotes by Joan D. Chittister

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There is no amount of darkness that can extinguish the inner light. The important thing is not to spend our lives trying to control the environment around us. The task is to control the environment within us.
Joan D. Chittister
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In Benedictine spirituality, work is what we do to continue what God wanted done....God goes on creating through us. Consequently a life spent serving God must be a life spent giving to others what we have been given.
Joan D. Chittister
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The secret of life is to let every segment of it produce its own yield at its own pace. Every period has something new to teach us. The harvest of youth is achievement the harvest of middle-age is perspective the harvest of age is wisdom the harvest of life is serenity.
Joan D. Chittister
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I celebrate myself, the poet Walt Whitman wrote. The thought is so delicious it is almost obscene. Imagine the joy that would come with celebrating the self — our achievements, our experiences, our existence. Imagine what it would be like to look into the mirror and say, as God taught us, That's good.
Joan D. Chittister
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Temptations are part of life, part of growing up. We grapple with them often - in some instances for our lifetime - before we come to realize that it is not so much the victory as it is the struggle that is holy.
Joan D. Chittister
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Hope is not a matter of waiting for things outside of us to get better. It is about getting better inside about what is going on outside.
Joan D. Chittister
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If the people speak and the king doesn't listen, there is something wrong with the king. If the kings acts precipitously and the people say nothing, something is wrong with the people.
Joan D. Chittister
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We don't change as we get older - we just get to be more of what we've always been.
Joan D. Chittister
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Acceptance is the universal currency of real friendship. . . .It does not warp or shape or wrench a person to be anything other than what they are.
Joan D. Chittister
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We punish the body and strip the earth. And we do it in pursuit of a so-called holiness that smacks of the bogus, that denies the gifts of God, that makes us marauders on the earth.
Joan D. Chittister
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Goodness is a process of becoming, not of being. What we do over and over again is what we become in the end.
Joan D. Chittister
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We are living in a period of commerical globalization. What we really need is spiritual globalization.
Joan D. Chittister
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To be contemplative we must become converted to the consciousness that makes us one with the universe, in tune with the cosmic voice of God.
Joan D. Chittister
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It's the beauty within us that makes it possible for us to recognize the beauty around us.
Joan D. Chittister
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Precisely because of the greatness of God, we don't have to be great at all. Just in awe.
Joan D. Chittister
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The moment a woman comes home to herself, the moment she knows that she has become a person of influence, an artist of her life, a sculptor of her universe, a person with rights and responsibilities who is respected and recognized, the resurrection of the world begins.
Joan D. Chittister
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There is a built-in danger in old age which, if we give in to it, makes aging one of the most difficult periods of life, rather than one of the most satisfying - which it should be. Tye danger of old age is that we may start acting old.
Joan D. Chittister
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To be a presence of perpetual thanksgiving may be the ultimate goal of life. The thankful person is the one for whom life is simply one long exercise in the sacred.
Joan D. Chittister
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Imagine how happy, how holy, life would be if we ever really learn to see beauty.
Joan D. Chittister
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We need a much broader conversation on what the morality of pro-life is
Joan D. Chittister