Corrie Ten Boom Quotes

Intercession means that we deliberately substitute God’s interests in others for our natural sympathy with them.

Forgiveness breaks the chain of causality because he who 'forgives' you--out of love--takes upon himself the consequences of what you have done. Forgiveness, therefore, always entails a sacrifice. The price you must pay for your own liberation through another's sacrifice is that you in turn must be willing to liberate in the same way, irrespective of the consequences to yourself.

Put up at the moment of greatest suffering a prayer, not for thy own escape, but for the enfranchisement of some being dear to thee, and the sovereign spirit will accept thy ransom.

Every time I take a step in the direction of generosity, I know I am moving from fear to love.

Even fear itself is frightened by the bodhisattva's fearlessness.

Grant that I have enough suffering that my heart really opens to the great compassion of this world, that I be given enough so that I don't wall myself off from the world, that it breaks down the heart and the separation and the ego and the fear, and it lets me touch the nectar, the milk of kindness itself, of something greater.

The embodiment of kindness is often made difficult by our long ingrained patterns of fear & jealousy.

When you focus on serving, there is no fear in you.

True charity requires courage: Let us overcome the fear of getting our hands dirty so as to help those in need.

There must be people who pray even for those who never pray.

I think we all have empathy. We may not have enough courage to display it.

I'm fascinated how often and with what whole-heartedness people will risk their lives to perform acts of courage, sacrifice, and compassion for total strangers.

It is necessary to help others, not only in our prayers, but in our daily lives. If we find we cannot help others, the least we can do is to desist from harming them.

I know what real courage is, and I understand true compassion.

From caring comes courage.

Defeat the fear of death and you welcome the death of fear.

Sometimes people don't trust the force of kindness. They think love or compassion or kindness will make you weak and kind of stupid and people will take advantage of you; you won't stand up for other people.

To pity distress is but human; to relieve it is Godlike.

I often write about nonreligious people, and I try to find situations where their sense of humanity is restored or discovered. I think you can be a good person in many ways. And I think you often have to be careful that prayer can seem superficial, because it's a very complicated thing to love your neighbor as yourself.

I just believe that our most redeeming feature as a species is our capacity for love.

Compassion is not defined in one form. There's no Indian compassion. There's no American compassion. It transcends nation, the gender, the age. Why? Because it is there in everybody. It's experienced by people occasionally.

I'm a praying atheist. When I hear an ambulance siren, I ask for a blessing for those people in trouble, knowing that no one's listening. I think it's just a habit of mindfulness.

Every once in a while, something happens to you that makes you realise that the human race is not quite as bad as it so often seems to be.

There is no religion without love, and people may talk as much as they like about their religion, but if it does not teach them to be good and kind to man and beast, it is all a sham.

Prayer must be broad in its scope - it must plead for others. Intercession for others is the hallmark of all true prayer. When prayer is confined to self and to the sphere of one's personal needs, it dies by reason of its littleness, narrowness and selfishness.