'Through compassion it is possible to recognize that the craving for love that men feel resides also in our own hearts, that the cruelty that the world knows all too well is also rooted in our own impulses. Through compassion we also sense our hope for forgivenss in our friends' eyes and our hatred in their bitter mouths. When they kill, we know that we can do the same. For a compassionate man nothing human is alien: no joy and no sorrow, no way of living and no way of dying.'
Henri JM Nouwen, The Wounded Healer, p.41.
