The great solitaries always surprise us by their acute understanding of life. Prayer of positive, creative quality needs a background of silence, we need not hope to know the power of prayer
~ E. Herman
Compassion is not a social facade. Compassion is not a sham designed to mask our essential self–centeredness. Compassion is the emotion that links us to those outside ourselves. It is the capacity for outreach. It enables us, it drives us, to go beyond ourselves to the beating pulse of the rest of the world. Compassion, then, is a dimension of what it means to be fully human.