Kindness Quotes

"We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow beings, and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, we feel all their joys and sorrows."

"Those who are unhappy have no need for anything in this world but people capable of giving them their attention."

"The other's vulnerability is the source of my ethical obligation."

"The other's suffering is my first concern, before my own."

"The other's need is an immediate claim upon my being."

"Hospitality is the opening of oneself to the stranger."

"The stranger demands our hospitality and becomes our teacher."

"Kindness is the practical acknowledgment of shared humanity."

"Kindness is the recognition of the other's essential strangeness."

"Forgiveness is the impossible gift we give to ourselves."

"The person who does not know that there is a You in every human being commits injustice."

"To listen is to offer one's presence to another."

"To be aware of another being is the beginning of all morality."

"To turn away from another is to turn away from one's own humanity."

"To respect another is to honor the mystery of their being."

"To listen with the whole being is the highest form of respect."

"The gift that demands nothing in return is the highest form of freedom."

"Kindness is what we offer to conceal our fundamental indifference."

"Kindness is strength clothed in gentleness."

"Kindness becomes authentic only when grounded in justice."

"To be human is to be summoned by the face of the other."

"Hospitality is the welcome of the wholly other."

"Goodness is not a quality I possess but a responsibility I cannot escape."

"The other's need is the first language; all speech emerges from it."

"Cruelty, on the whole, is not a deliberate diabolical choice, but something into which men fall when they cease to feel sympathy."

"Kindness without justice is mere sentimentality."

"Kindness organized becomes solidarity."

"Kindness is often the cruelest response, preventing the rupture that would liberate."

"Kindness requires an awareness of the other's suffering."

"Kindness in an unjust world is complicity."