You are so anxious about the future that you do not enjoy the present. You therefore do not live in the present or the future. You live as if you are never going to die, and then die having never really lived.

It is my fundamental conviction that compassion - the natural capacity of the human heart to feel concern for and connection with another human being - constitutes a basic aspect of our nature shared by all human beings, as well as being the foundation of our happiness. All ethical teachings, whether religious or nonreligious, aim to nurture this innate and precious quality, to develop it and to perfect it.

The practicing of loving kindness toward one's enemy is the ultimate test of one's own spiritual attainment.

We know that to wage a nuclear war today, for example, would be a form of suicide; or that to pollute the air or the oceans in order to achieve some short-term benefit would be to destroy the very basis for our survival.

Spend 5 minutes at the beginning of each day remembering we all want the same things (to be happy and be loved) and we are all connected to one another.

Compassion is something we can count on. Even if we face economic problems and our fortunes decline, we can still share our compassion with our fellow human beings. National and global economies are subject to many ups and downs, but through them all we can retain a compassionate attitude that will carry us through.

I am confident I will set foot again in Tibet in my lifetime.