Through compassion it is possible to recognize that the craving for love that men feel resides in our own hearts, that the cruelty that the world knows all too well is also rooted in our own impulses.
Through compassion we also sense our hope for forgiveness in our friends' eyes and our hatred in their bitter mouths.
For a compassionate person nothing human is alien: no joy, no sorrow, no way of living and no way of dying.
— Henri J. M. Nouwen, Hate-Work by David W. Augsburger