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.

We cannot learn from one another until we stop shouting at one another – until we speak quietly enough so that our words can be heard as well as our voices.

I just really believe people have to get hungry. I think maybe what we need to do, instead of trying to stuff our beliefs down people’s throats, is just pray for them to really be hungry and to see their neediness.

Love is the ability and willingness to allow those that you care for to be what they choose for themselves without any insistence that they satisfy you.

I let the dog out, or I let him in, and we talk some. I let him know I like him, and he lets me know he likes me.

I would go to the deeps a hundred times to cheer a downcast spirit. It is good for me to have been afflicted, that I might know how to speak a word in season to one that is weary.

A squirrel dying in front of your house may be more relevant to your interests right now than people dying in Africa.

Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat.

I’m not the kind of cat that’s going to cut off an ear if I can’t do something.

Sitting on a bedroom floor crying is something that makes you feel really alone. If someone’s singing about that feeling, you feel bonded to that person.

You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view.

What do we live for, if not to make life less difficult for each other?

We’re a blip in the existence of the universe, and we’re constantly trying to pull each other down. Not doing things to help each other.

When you’re in prison, you want to know that you were thought about.

You must live for another if you wish to live for yourself.

Transforming yourself into a deep listener will not only prove more amusing as you open your mind to their mind, but you will gain the most invaluable lessons about human psychology.

I learned from my dog long before I went to Gombe that we weren’t the only beings with personalities. What the chimps did was help me to persuade others.

‚Suffering should not make us bitter people,‘ my mother once said, ‚it should make us better comforters.‘ Young people need to hear this from those who have walked before them, because someday they’ll be walking those same steps, but there may not be anyone following behind.

The only way to have a friend is to be one.

Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity for a kindness.

What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others.

I’ve never been a jealous person, and I’ve never felt built up by someone else’s failure – that’s a cheap thrill.

When I first went to places where people were suffering from war and persecution, I felt ashamed of my feelings of sadness. I could see more possibilities in my life.

Learning to live for others isn’t something that just comes naturally to anybody. You have to train yourself to do it.

What really raises one’s indignation against suffering is not suffering intrinsically, but the senselessness of suffering.

‚Tis not enough to help the feeble up, but to support them after.

I care not much for a man’s religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it.

There are people who can do all fine and heroic things but one – keep from telling their happiness to the unhappy.

Do everything as in the eye of another.

I’m a people pleaser. I hold a lot of things in. I’m always making sure everybody is okay. I usually don’t rage; I usually don’t curse.

Let your heart feel for the afflictions and distress of everyone, and let your hand give in proportion to your purse.

Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.

An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind.

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 have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them.

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.

The dog that trots about finds a bone.

People who treat other people as less than human must not be surprised when the bread they have cast on the waters comes floating back to them, poisoned.

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

We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.

Consider, when you are enraged at any one, what you would probably think if he should die during the dispute.

To be social is to be forgiving.

I see myself in all the people in the world who are suffering and who are very badly treated and who are often made to feel that they have no place on this Earth.

Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to cast a stone.

I would be stupid not to be on my own side. But I’m a human being, too. And I’m on the side of human beings, rather than on the side of crocodiles.

Owners of dogs will have noticed that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they will think you are God. Whereas owners of cats are compelled to realize that, if you provide them with food and water and affection, they draw the conclusion that they are God.

Never speak to an invalid from behind, nor from the door, nor from any distance from him, nor when he is doing anything. The official politeness of servants in these things is so grateful to invalids, that many prefer, without knowing why, having none but servants about them.

I don’t understand why or how we can bully each other.

The poor don’t know that their function in life is to exercise our generosity.

The best leaders are readers of people. They have the intuitive ability to understand others by discerning how they feel and recognizing what they sense.

Tears shed for self are tears of weakness, but tears shed for others are a sign of strength.

There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats.

No, I never thought I would like cats.

Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.

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.

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

We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other’s happiness, not by each other’s misery.

Let us touch the dying, the poor, the lonely and the unwanted according to the graces we have received and let us not be ashamed or slow to do the humble work.

If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from that person’s angle as well as from your own.

Seek first to understand, then to be understood.

The smallest feline is a masterpiece.