David Ebershoff Quotes

More helpful than all wisdom is one draught of simple human pity that will not forsake us.

You have to give love to get love.

Why does God endow us with compassion?

I don't think love is a tricky issue at all. Love is best understood when we share: Share time, energy, food, resources, insights, information, whatever. It's usually thought of as something that exists between two people, but that's just because it's easier to see and feel in the space between them. Each person is sharing a lot with the other.

People do not want what we have in our pockets half as much as they want what is in our hearts. If we combine both, intelligently, however, according to our means, we give wisely and well.

I also think that what's wrong with all of us is that we don't show enough love toward each other.

My wife has been my greatest earthly inspiration. She excels in eloquence, the poetry of words, empathy and graciousness.

If you have the support of people with a heart and a brain, then you're good.

A loving heart is the truest wisdom.

Love and compassion don't at all have to make us weak, or lead us to losing discernment and vision. We just have to learn how to find them. And see, in truth, what they bring us.

What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?

Cancer is a growth hormone for empathy, and empathy makes us useful to each other in ways we were not, could not have been, before.

We win by tenderness. We conquer by forgiveness.

We all, I think, believe in compassion. If you look at all the world religions, all the main world religions, you'll find within them some teaching concerning compassion.

A good heart is better than all the heads in the world.

The greater good is achieved by not only telling people what they need to know, but also filling them with a sense of empathy and love.

Care and pity are two different things.

The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you're uncool.

Compassion enables you to reach to the heavens and look through the heart of God.

Many times, we spend so much time on policy, but we don't explain how the policy affects and makes the heart even grow bigger. And I think that's a place that we have to look inside.

There can be a fundamental gulf of gracelessness in a human heart which neither our love nor our courage can bridge.

Impart as much as you can of your spiritual being to those who are on the road with you, and accept as something precious what comes back to you from them.

I know for certain of only one commandment, one obligation, that God imposes upon us, and that is to be compassionate toward other human beings.

One forgives to the degree that one loves.

Love is the missing factor; there is a lack of affection, of warmth in relationship; and because we lack that love, that tenderness, that generosity, that mercy in relationship, we escape into mass action, which produces further confusion, further misery.