Humans are unique in having the astonishing capacity to extend our sympathies far beyond the here and now. Through time and space, to anywhere and anything we choose. It is our culture that decides how large and inclusive our moral circle is, but it is each of us who makes up our culture. (p.250).

It is better to err on the side of feeling.

To begin to know ourselves we must have sincere conversations with ourselves as if with a good friend. We must answer without reserve, listen without judgement, and accept without condition. That is self-love.

I remember a time in a class on a cold winter morning a Japanese girl came with a surgical mask & I thought “wow people would go to extremes NOT to get sick in Japan” afterwards on a break I approached her & asked in a cynical manner: why the mask? Are you afraid of catching a cold? & then she said “in Japan you use it when YOU are under the weather & you don’t want other people to get sick, it is the polite thing to do” wow! That's a lesson I will never forget.

An infinity with God has always been a circle, not a straight line past all your mistakes.

Resolve to be tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant of the weak and the wrong. Sometime in life you will have been all of these.

There were relatives of their victims among the Hogwarts students, who now found themselves the unwilling objects of a gruesome sort of reflected fame as they walked the corridors: Susan Bones, whose uncle, aunt, and cousins had all died at the hands of one of the ten, said miserably during Herbology that she now had a good idea what it felt like to be Harry.'And I don't know how you stand it- it's horrible' she said bluntly.

As the pain that can be told is but half a pain, so the pity that questions has little healing in its touch. What Lily craved was the darkness made by enfolding arms, the silence which is not solitude, but compassion holding its breath.

Help your child see others' emotions as well as experiencing his or her own without imposing your judgment.

Help your child see others' emotions as well as experiencing his or her own without imposing your judgment.