Quote

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

Joan D. Chittister

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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

More quotes by Joan D. Chittister

Image
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
Image
We must learn to pray out of our weaknesses so that God can become our strength.
Joan D. Chittister
Image
The spiritual response is too often a simplistic one: we abandon God or we blame God for abandoning us.
Joan D. Chittister
Image
Life is a thing of many stages and moving parts. What we do with ease at one time of life we can hardly manage at another. What we could not fathom doing when we were young, we find great joy in when we are old. Like the seasons through which we move, life itself is a never-ending series of harvests, a different fruit for every time.
Joan D. Chittister
Image
If anything diminishes a person, it is the cancer of constant complaining.
Joan D. Chittister
Image
Benedictine spirituality is a consistent one: live life normally, live life thouhtfully, live life profouncly, live life well. Never neglect and never exaggerate. It is a lesson that a world full of cults and fads and workaholics and short courses in difficult subjects needs dearly to learn.
Joan D. Chittister
Image
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
Image
Hope is what sits by the window and waits for one more dawn, despite the fact that there isn't an ounce of proof in tonight's black, black sky that it can possible come.
Joan D. Chittister
Image
Compassion for the other comes out of our ability to accept ourselves. Until we realize both our own weaknesses and our own privileges, we can never tolerate lack of status and depth of weakness in the other.
Joan D. Chittister
Image
It's the beauty within us that makes it possible for us to recognize the beauty around us.
Joan D. Chittister
Image
Imagine how happy, how holy, life would be if we ever really learn to see beauty.
Joan D. Chittister
Image
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
Image
In scripture God brings the animals to the human for naming. In that simple act the human is brought to recognize the particular personality and worth of each living creature. Too bad we forget so often.
Joan D. Chittister
Image
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
Image
Freedom, in childhood, may be the right to be totally self-centered. … But freedom in old age is the ability to be the best of the self I have developed during all those years.
Joan D. Chittister
Image
Religion is pointing toward the moon
Joan D. Chittister
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Solitude is not a way of running away from life ... from our feelings. On the contrary. This is the time we sort them out, air them, get over them, and go on without the burden of yesterday.
Joan D. Chittister
Image
Hospitality is the key to new ideas, new friends, new possibilities. What we take into our lives changes us. Without new people and new ideas, we are imprisoned inside ourselves.
Joan D. Chittister