You cannot share your life with a dog, as I had done in Bournemouth, or a cat, and not know perfectly well that animals have personalities and minds and feelings.

The responsibility of tolerance lies with those who have the wider vision.

One man cannot hold another man down in the ditch without remaining down in the ditch with him.

Having a bunch of cats around is good. If you’re feeling bad, you just look at the cats, you’ll feel better because they know that everything is just as it is. There’s nothing to get excited about. They just know. They’re saviours.

If someone decides they’re not going to be happy, it’s not your problem. You don’t have to spend your time and energy trying to cheer up someone who has already decided to stay in a bad mood. Believe it or not, you can actually hurt people by playing into their self-pity.

Positional leaders ignore the fact that every person has hopes, dreams, desires, and goals of his own. And leaders must bring their vision and the aspirations of the people they lead together in a way that benefits everyone.

When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?

Think occasionally of the suffering of which you spare yourself the sight.

Being a good listener is absolutely critical to being a good leader; you have to listen to the people who are on the front line.

Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.

We may have our private opinions but why should they be a bar to the meeting of hearts?

If you’re in trouble, or hurt or need – go to the poor people. They’re the only ones that’ll help – the only ones.

You have to understand that people that are hurting are going to criticize.

A person once asked me, in a provocative manner, if I approved of homosexuality. I replied with another question: ‚Tell me: when God looks at a gay person, does he endorse the existence of this person with love, or reject and condemn this person?‘ We must always consider the person.

I think it matters whether someone has a good heart.

Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.

Give to everyone who begs from you; and of him who takes away your goods do not ask them again. And as you wish that men would do to you, do so to them.

Writers are lampposts and critics are dogs. Ask lampposts what they think about dogs. Does the dog hurt the lamppost?

I collect records. And cats. I don’t have any cats right now. But if I’m taking a walk and I see a cat, I’m happy.

Listen with the intent to understand, not the intent to reply.

I think we have to own the fears that we have of each other, and then, in some practical way, some daily way, figure out how to see people differently than the way we were brought up to.

The correlative to loving our neighbors as ourselves is hating ourselves as we hate our neighbors.

So there’s no guarantee if you like the music you will empathize with the culture and the people who made it. It doesn’t necessarily happen. I think it can, but it doesn’t necessarily happen. Which is kind of a shame.

I love dogs, but dogs, you have to be in the country with dogs. I cannot walk a dog on the street.

I feel like if you’re a really good human being, you can try to find something beautiful in every single person, no matter what.

If you must speak ill of another, do not speak it, write it in the sand near the water’s edge.

When you’re around the kids, you feel like you act the most grown up just because you’re supposed to lead. I say things, like every other parent, that reminds you of your own parents. One thing I do know about being a parent, you understand why your father was in a bad mood a lot.

It sometimes makes people feel better about themselves, you know, to put other people down, or make fun of them, or maybe make mockery of their work and that doesn’t make me feel good at all.

An eye for an eye only leads to more blindness.

You are 27 or 28 right? It is very tough to live at that age. When nothing is sure. I have sympathy with you.

We must, all of us, learn actually not to have enemies, but only confused adversaries who are ourselves in disguise.

Friendship is but another name for an alliance with the follies and the misfortunes of others. Our own share of miseries is sufficient: why enter then as volunteers into those of another?

Men feel that cruelty to the poor is a kind of cruelty to animals. They never feel that it is an injustice to equals; nay it is treachery to comrades.

I have to be in tune. All the time. I have to be in tune with my husband, where he is, how he’s feeling. I have to be in tune with where my family is.

In ancient times cats were worshipped as gods; they have not forgotten this.

Breathe in deeply to bring your mind home to your body. Then look at, or think of, the person triggering this emotion: With mindfulness, you can see that she is unhappy, that she is suffering. You can see her wrong perceptions. You can see that she is not beautiful when she says things that are unkind.

Hell is yourself and the only redemption is when a person puts himself aside to feel deeply for another person.

Culture makes people understand each other better. And if they understand each other better in their soul, it is easier to overcome the economic and political barriers. But first they have to understand that their neighbour is, in the end, just like them, with the same problems, the same questions.

I felt I had to solve everyone’s problems.

When we believe the best of people, we let go of each thing they do that is hurtful to us. And we choose to think things like, ‚I don’t believe they meant to hurt me.‘ ‚Maybe they’re having a bad day or don’t feel well.‘ ‚They probably don’t even realize how they sound.‘

If you try and take a cat apart to see how it works, the first thing you have on your hands is a nonworking cat.

A bone to the dog is not charity. Charity is the bone shared with the dog, when you are just as hungry as the dog.

Never find fault with the absent.

We cannot possibly let ourselves get frozen into regarding everyone we do not know as an absolute stranger.

Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves.

Never elated when someone’s oppressed, never dejected when another one’s blessed.

Our human compassion binds us the one to the other – not in pity or patronizingly, but as human beings who have learnt how to turn our common suffering into hope for the future.

If one by one we counted people out For the least sin, it wouldn’t take us long To get so we had no one left to live with. For to be social is to be forgiving.

We will never have true civilization until we have learned to recognize the rights of others.

There is danger that we lose sight of what our friend is absolutely, while considering what she is to us alone.

Sadly, of course, there is real evil in the world. You watch the news, and you see all of the people suffering and so much cruelty.

I’m actually starting to like more and more people who have convictions that are unpopular.

Constant kindness can accomplish much. As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust, and hostility to evaporate.

Don’t tell your problems to people: eighty percent don’t care; and the other twenty percent are glad you have them.

One of the things I’ve never been accused of is not caring about people.

To his dog, every man is Napoleon; hence the constant popularity of dogs.

The way people look at me these days – that’s the same way I looked at President Obama before I met him. We tend to forget that people who’ve attained a certain position are human.

What I remember as a child is that other kids didn’t care about suffering. I always did.

There are folks who now know black families – like the Johnsons on ‚Black-ish‘ or the folks on ‚Modern Family.‘ They become part of who you are. You share their pains. You understand their fears. They make you laugh, and they change how you see the world.

I think it is a sin to look at another person as inferior to yourself because of race or because of ethnic background, and I think the greatest thing to do is to pray that God will give you love for them, and I do.

One must be poor to know the luxury of giving!