Black Beauty Compassion and Love Quotes

When Ginger comes to Birtwick, she's been mistreated for much of her early life. John Manly and Squire Gordon transform her behavior with kindness. By showing compassion for the way she was treated—rather than punishing her for bad behavior—they earn Ginger's complete trust.

Sometimes love and compassion are this simple: Merrylegs loves his people, and that's his motivation for everything he does. He has strong, loving relationships with all the humans at Birtwick, who love him right back.

Squire Gordon finds a better job for James Howard, Birtwick's first stable boy, out of a sense of compassion. He feels it wouldn't be right to deprive James of a good career opportunity even though it will mean finding a new stable boy at Birtwick. This kind of love and empathy is typical of the way Squire Gordon operates—he's really the best kind of human.

James Howard manages to get Beauty and Ginger out of a burning stable because he really understands how horses think, and his love and bravery drives him to rescue them. James has empathy for their fright, and this saves Beauty and Ginger, even though other horses perish in the fire.

Jerry Barker praises a man who helps his young daughter across the street, pointing out that often it's the little deeds of compassion and kindness that make the biggest difference.

Jerry's friend Governor Gray listens to the sad story of cab driver Seedy Sam's life, but has no tolerance for Sam's mistreatment of horses. Here we see how much value this story places on treating animals with love and compassion, even when circumstances are hard.

Sewell is so passionate about the importance of kindness and compassion that she goes so far as to urge readers to use this compassion to actively help others. There's a difference between having compassion for someone's plight and actually doing something about it, and she wants to be sure readers understand that action is by far the better path.

Ginger's love for Beauty is incredibly poignant because she doesn't have many other loving relationships that we see throughout the book. Their friendship and love for one another gives her a brief moment of comfort at the end of her life.

Here's another example of the power of love: Jerry describes a very old man and his horse who pull a coal cart. They're extremely poor and the work is hard, but they love each other so much that the work seems bearable and they don't seem unhappy, despite the circumstances.