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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
Compassion
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More quotes by Joan D. Chittister
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
Superficial people are those who simply go along without a question in the world-asking nothing, troubled by nothing, examining nothing. Whatever people around them do, they do, too. That's a sad and plastic life-routine and comfortable, maybe, but still sad.
Joan D. Chittister
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
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
It is in community that we come to see God in the other. It is in community that we see our own emptiness filled up. It is community that calls me beyond the pinched horizons of my own life, my own country, my own race, and gives me the gifts I do not have within me.
Joan D. Chittister
Life always comes out of death. The present rises from the ashes of the past. The future is always possible for those who are willing to re-create it.
Joan D. Chittister
Memory is not about what went on in the past, it is about what is going on inside us right this moment. It is made up of the stuff of life in the process of becoming the grist of the soul.
Joan D. Chittister
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
It's the beauty within us that makes it possible for us to recognize the beauty around us.
Joan D. Chittister
Find the thing that stirs your heart and make room for it
Joan D. Chittister
Indifference is the acid of life. It erodes all the spirit that's in us and makes us useless to anyone else. We all have to stand for something, or our souls cease to breathe.
Joan D. Chittister
prayer can be an easy substitute for real spirituality. It would be impossible to have spirituality without prayer, of course, but it is certainly possible to pray without having a spirituality at all. How do you know? 'Am I becoming kinder?' is a good place to start.
Joan D. Chittister
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
Fear is not the opposite of courage. Fear is the catalyst of courage.
Joan D. Chittister
Religion is pointing toward the moon
Joan D. Chittister
Ideals are like stars, Carl Schurz wrote. You will not succeed in touching them with your hands. But like seafarers on the desert of waters, you choose them as your guides, and following them you will reach your destiny. Ideals do not determine what we do to make a living in life They govern what we become as we do it.
Joan D. Chittister
In our dreams lies our unfinished work for the world.
Joan D. Chittister
To insist on living until we die may be one of life's greatest virtues.
Joan D. Chittister
We don't change as we get older - we just get to be more of what we've always been.
Joan D. Chittister
Hospitality means we take people into the space that is our lives and our minds and our hearts and our work and our efforts. Hospitality is the way we come out of ourselves. It is the first step towards dismantling the barriers of the world. Hospitality is the way we turn a prejudiced world around, one heart at a time.
Joan D. Chittister
