Compassion is not a popular virtue

Compassion is not a popular virtue.

Geniuses are not always pleasant people.

Human beings have always been mythmakers.

I had failed to make a gift of myself to God.

There must be no coercion in matters of faith!

You are your best self when you give yourself away.

Religions don't own compassion; it is a human virtue.

I used to hate religion, I loathed it in my angry days.

Compassion is not an option. It's the key to our survival.

Religion starts with the perception that something is wrong.

I remind myself that my pain is not unique. Everybody suffers.

There is nothing in Islam that is more violent than Christianity.

It is not difficult to find a religious justification for killing.

Beethoven's string quartets express pain itself; it is not MY pain.

Respect only has meaning as respect for those with whom I do not agree.

Alas, all traditions lose their primal purity and we all fail our founders.

I have nothing maternal in me, and men want to be mothered a lot of the time.

When you feel compassion, you dethrone yourself from the centre of the world.

I have a very sharp tongue, I'm very impatient, and it's a lifelong struggle.

Storytelling is fine as long as you can encourage people to act on the stories.

Buddhists talk about nirvana in very much the same terms as monotheists describe God.

My study of religion, which I regard in many ways as an art form, is a search for meaning.

I like silence; I'm a gregarious loner and without the solitude, I lose my gregariousness.

We are what we are because of the hard work, insights and achievements of countless others.

The only way to show a true respect for God is to act morally while ignoring God’s existence.

A theology should be like poetry, which takes us to the end of what words and thoughts can do.

Compassion is not feeling sorry for others. It's not soft. It requires an intellectual effort.

I think I get from my books what other people get from family or a relationship or from prayer.

The great task of our time is to build a global society, where people can live together in peace

I'm seeking to make sense of life, looking for its meaning and how we can have a better humanity.

If it is not tempered by compassion, and empathy, reason can lead men and women into a moral void.

...there is something wrong with any spirituality that does not inspire selfless concern for others

Like art, religion is an imaginative and creative effort to find a meaning and value in human life.

Compassion is the key in Islam and Buddhism and Judaism and Christianity. They are profoundly similar.

My greatest solace is my study. If I am deprived of my study, I can become lost, unhappy and unhinged.

Sometimes I call myself a freelance, I can't see any one of the great religions as superior to others.

[T]he family is a school of compassion because it is here that we learn to live with other people. (68)

Fundamentalists are not friends of democracy. And that includes your fundamentalists in the United States.

For centuries, the Muslims were able to co-exist perfectly well with Jews and Christians in the Middle East.

there is no ascent to the heights without prior descent into darkness, no new life without some form of death.

All religions are designed to teach us how to live, joyfully, serenely, and kindly, in the midst of suffering.

Compassion is a practically acquired knowledge, like dancing. You must do it and practice diligently day by day.

It's a great event to get outside and enjoy nature. I find it very exciting no matter how many times I see bald eagles.

The values of Islam are expressed by Muslims clearly. September 11 changed the world, and put Muslims on the spotlight.

I was a lousy nun. I couldn't do it. I couldn't find God. It wasn't suitable for me. It is suitable for very few people.

We are most creative and sense other possibilities that transcend our ordinary experience when we leave ourselves behind.

We are addicted to our egotism, our likes and dislikes and prejudices, and depend upon them for our own sense of identity.

There are some forms of religion that are bad, just as there's bad cooking or bad art or bad sex, you have bad religion too.

Compassion doesn't, of course, mean feeling sorry for people, or pity, which is how the word has become emasculated in a way.

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