But one thing I do know: life and time are ghosted creatures for us all. They belong to us – and are not ours at the same time.
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.
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.
Compassion is not sympathy. Compassion is mercy. It is a commitment to take responsibility for the suffering of others.
Beware the religion that turns you against another one. It’s unlikely that it’s really religion at all.
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.
Compassion is the ability to understand how difficult it is for people to be the best of what they want to be at all times.
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.
We talk religion in a world that worships the bread but does not distribute it, that practices ritual rather than righteousness, that confesses but does not repent.
Beauty scatters the seeds of hope in us.
When souls really touch, it is forever. Then space and time disappear, and all that remains is the consciousness that we are not alone in life.
Darkness deserves gratitude. It is the alleluia point at which we learn to understand that all growth does not take place in the sunlight.
Compassion makes no distinction between friends and enemies, neighbors and outsiders, compatriots and foreigners. Compassion is the gate to human community.
Too many times we insist on loving people the way we want to love them instead of the way they need to be loved.
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.
My limitations make space for the gifts of other people. Without the grace of our limitations we would be isolated, dry, and insufferable creatures indeed.