Helen H. Gardener Quotes

As a doctor, I've learned the importance and value of listening.

Compassion has to become a discipline. It's something that you do. It's no good thinking that you agree with compassion or not, you've just got to do it. Just like it's no good agreeing that it's possible to float, you just have to get into the pool and then you learn that it's possible.

I'd like people to think of me as someone who cares about them.

There may not be a hell, but those who judge may create one. I think people are over-taught. They are over-taught everything. You have to find out by what happens to you, how you will react. I'll have to use a strange term here... "good." I don't know where it comes from, but I feel that there's an ultimate strain of goodness born in each of us. I don't believe in God, but I believe in this "goodness" like a tube running through our bodies. It can be nurtured. It's always magic, when on a freeway packed with traffic, a stranger makes room for you to change lanes... it gives you hope.

Consider that we shouldn't call our brother a fool, since we don't know ourselves what we are.

May we help more than we hurt, may we seek to understand more than be understood and may we love more than we judge.

It is because I think so much of warm and sensitive hearts, that I would spare them from being wounded.

I grew up with a real appreciation about just how wonderful and intimate the relationship is between a doctor and a patient was and the sense that this was a noble profession.

Good people aren't good because they never cause harm to others. They're good because they treat others the best way they know how, with the understanding that they have.

Care more for the individual patient than for the special features of the disease. . . . Put yourself in his place . . . The kindly word, the cheerful greeting, the sympathetic look - these the patient understands.

I am not going to change who I am. I am human and I know how to love, and be kind, and be compassionate to those who are weaker than me. Just because I have power doesn't mean I have to use it!

Think twice before you speak to a friend in need

I think probably kindness is my number one attribute in a human being. I'll put it before any of the things like courage or bravery or generosity or anything else.

Compassion is the chief law of human existence.

And so my hope for you, good boy, as you grow taller every day, is that you will learn to take good care of yourself, and you will learn to take good care of others-and, someday, you'll see how those two things are exactly the same.

Frequently people think compassion and love are merely sentimental. No! They are very demanding. If you are going to be compassionate, be prepared for action.

Theres a very fine line between not listening and not caring. I like to think I walk that line everyday of my life.

You know, I have come to think listening is love, that's what it really is.

When men are inhuman, take care not to feel towards them as they do towards other humans.

If people were superior to animals, they'd take good care of them," said Pooh.

Acceptance is what we wish for ourselves and often deny others.

Kindness and consideration of somebody besides yourself. I think that keeps you feeling young. I really do.

Above all remember your humanity.

Unless a man has pity he is not truly a man. If a man has not wept at the worlds pain he is only half a man, and there will always be pain in the world, knowing this does not mean that a man shall dispair. A good man will seek to take pain out of things. A foolish man will not even notice it, except in himself, and the poor unfortunate evil man will drive pain deeper into things and spread it about wherever he goes.

If you’re decent to others, then you’re decent to yourself.