Quotes About Compassion

Compassion begets compassion, cruelty begets cruelty. What we give we will ultimately receive. Nonhumans help make us human. They teach us respect, compassion, and unconditional love. When we mistreat animals, we mistreat ourselves. When we destroy animal spirits and souls, we destroy our own spirits and souls.

When we practice generating compassion, we can expect to experience our fear of pain. Compassion practice is daring. It involves learning to relax and allow ourselves to move gently toward what scares us. The trick to doing this is to stay with emotional distress without tightening into aversion, to let fear soften us rather than harden into resistance.

True compassion is not about giving or taking. True compassion is doing just what is needed.

Some people consider the practice of love and compassion is only related to religious practice and if they are not interested in religion they neglect these inner values. But love and compassion are qualities that human beings require just to live together.

I consider non-violence to be compassion in action. It doesn’t mean weakness, cowering in fear, or simply doing nothing. It is to act without violence, motivated by compassion, recognising the rights of others.

For an act to be moral the intention must be based on compassion, not duty. We do something because we want to do it, because we feel we have to do it, not because we ought to do it. And even if our efforts fail - or we never even get to implement them - we are still moral because our motivation was based on compassion.

To the extent that our experience of suffering reminds us of what everyone else also endures, it serves as a powerful inspiration to practice compassion and avoid causing others pain. And to the extent that suffering awakens our empathy and causes us to connect with others, it serves as the basis of compassion and love.

But compassion is a deeper thing that waits beyond the tension of choosing sides. Compassion, in practice, does not require us to give up the truth of what we feel or the truth of our reality. Nor does it allow us to minimize the humanity of those who hurt us. Rather, we are asked to know ourselves enough that we can stay open to the truth of others, even when their truth or their inability to live up to their truth has hurt us.

That's the only way we're going to get through these programs. That is true compassion. Having people become dependent on others is not compassion at all.

The first step in spiritual life is to have compassion. A person who is kind and loving never needs to go searching for God. God rushes toward any heart that beats with compassion-it is God's favorite place.

In politics, throwing the taxpayers' money at disasters is supposed to show your compassion. But robbing Peter to pay Paul is not compassion. It is politics.

Compassion is the basis of all truthful relationship: it means being present with love-for ourselves and for all life, including animals, fish, birds, and trees. Compassion is bringing our deepest truth into our actions, no matter how much the world seems to resist, because that is ultimately what we have to give this world and one another.

You can have compassion for someone who is suffering and try to help this person but if your relationship with mankind is only one of compassion, it is only another form of contempt and it prevents feelings like admiration, empathy which to my mind are much more positive.

Through compassion it is possible to recognize that the craving for love that people feel resides also in our own hearts, that the cruelty the world knows all too well is also rooted in our own impulses. Through compassion we also sense our hope for forgiveness in our friends' eyes and our hatred in their bitter mouths. When they kill, we know that we could have done it; when they give life, we know that we can do the same. For a compassionate person nothing human is alien: no joy and no sorrow, no way of living and no way of dying.

An attitude of compassion does not mean looking down on someone, pitying them in their misery. Compassion is based on respect. We discuss life as equals, learn from each other and strive together to improve our lives.

Jesus moved in a very poor world. People were seeking their own solutions. Many were helped - not that Jesus was helping - they were helped. And Jesus says again and again: "It is your faith that has healed you." When you have faith, compassion can pour into you. When you have faith, you are open to compassion.

I feel like my joy in life has intensified, (and) my compassion for people has just strengthened. I have compassion that I wouldn't have had before.

The act of compassion begins with full attention, just as rapport does. You have to really see the person. If you see the person, then naturally, empathy arises. If you tune into the other person, you feel with them. If empathy arises, and if that person is in dire need, then empathic concern can come. You want to help them, and then that begins a compassionate act. So I'd say that compassion begins with attention.

Normal people, who grow up with compassion, never amount to anything. They're the ones who end up gluing those little dots on the highway. Or, putting glue on the dots for the guy who glues dots on the highway. Screwed up people, who weren't coddled or raised with compassion, we get stuff done. Sure, we feel a little alone and abandoned, but, we're... very... happy. Why can't you love me, daddy?

If you have nothing but compassion, you are still very wealthy; if you have everything but compassion, you are still very poor!

I'm not really concerned about boundaries. I just follow my conscience and my heart. Follow your heart. That's what I do. Compassion is something I have a lot of, because I've been through a lot of pain in my life. Anybody who has suffered a lot of pain has a lot of compassion.

O men! you can take life easily but, remember, none of you can give life! So, have mercy, have compassion! And, never forget, that compassion makes the world noble and beautiful.

Each of us in our own way can try to spread compassion into people's hearts. Western civilizations these days place great importance on filling the human brain with knowledge, but no one seems to care about filling the human heart with compassion. This is what the real role of religion is.

Relational trust is built on movements of the human heart such as empathy, commitment, compassion, patience, and the capacity to forgive.

Chekhov said: let's put God - and all these grand progressive ideas - to one side. Let's begin with man; let's be kind and attentive to the individual man - whether he's a bishop, a peasant, an industrial magnate, a convict in the Sakhalin Islands, or a waiter in a restaurant. Let's begin with respect, compassion, and love for the individual - or we'll never get anywhere.

If we dedicate a certain amount of time each day to cultivating compassion or any other positive quality, we are likely to attain results, just like when we train the body... Meditation consists of familiarizing ourselves with a new way of being, of managing our thoughts and the way we perceive the world. Through the recent advances in neuroscience it is now possible to evaluate these methods and to verify their impact on the brain and body.

Compassion and justice are companions, not choices.

We have to make mistakes, its how we learn compassion for others

Compassion is to share the pain without sharing the suffering.

Great love -- the kind that illumines and transforms us -- always includes a keen awareness of limitation as well. Though love may inspire us to expand and develop in new ways, we can never be all things to the one we love, or someone other than who we are. Yet once accepted, limitation also helps us develop essential qualities, such as patience, determination, compassion, and humor. When love comes down to earth -- bringing to light those dark corners we would prefer to ignore, encompassing all the different parts of who we are -- it gains depth and power.

All I know for sure is that issues like race, like class, are always best approached with compassion and open-mindedness.

True compassion does not come from wanting to help out those less fortunate than ourselves but from realizing our kinship with all beings.

Feeling compassion for ourselves in no way releases us from responsibility for our actions. Rather, it releases us from the self-hatred that prevents us from responding to our life with clarity and balance.

Something called 'the Oklahoma Standard' became known throughout the world. It means resilience in the face of adversity. It means a strength and compassion that will not be defeated.

If God's people are to be living examples of one thing, that thing ought to be - it must be - compassion.

It is our own pain, and our own desire to be free of it, that alerts us to the suffering of the world. It is our personal discovery that pain can be acknowledged, even held lovingly, that enables us to look at the pain around us unflinchingly and feel compassion being born in us. We need to start with ourselves.

By compassion we make others' misery our own, and so, by relieving them, we relieve ourselves also.

If you do not know how to take care of yourself, and the violence in you, then you will not be able to take care of others. You must have love and patience before you can truly listen to your partner or child. If you are irritated you cannot listen. You have to know how to breath mindfully, embrace your irritation and transform it. Offer ONLY understand and compassion to your partner or child - This is the true practice of love.

Kindness and compassion towards all living things is a mark of a civilized society. Conversely, cruelty, whether it is directed against human beings or against animals, is not the exclusive province of any one culture or community of people.

Compassion is the wish to see others free from suffering.

We can work together for a better world with men and women of goodwill, those who radiate the intrinsic goodness of humankind. To do so effectively, the world needs a global ethic with values which give meaning to life experiences and, more than religious institutions and dogmas, sustain the non-material dimension of humanity. Mankind's universal values of love, compassion, solidarity, caring and tolerance should form the basis for this global ethic which should permeate culture, politics, trade, religion and philosophy. It should also permeate the extended family of the United Nations.

Healing invokes the power of compassion, both for yourself and for others... At this point, the healed may become a healer.

There are scores of people waiting for someone just like us to come along; people who will appreciate our compassion, our encouragement, who will need our unique talents. Someone who will live a happier life merely because we took the time to share what we had to give.

Depression taught me the importance of compassion and hard work, and that you can overcome enormous obstacles.

When our grandchildren ask us where we were when the voiceless and the vulnerable in our era needed leaders of compassion and purpose, I hope we can say that we showed up, and that we showed up on time.

Want compassion is not to be numbered among the general faults of mankind. The black ingredient which fouls our disposition is envy. Hence our eyes, it is to be feared, are seldom turned up to those who are manifestly greater, better, wiser, or happier than ourselves, without some degree of malignity, we commonly look downward on the mean and miserable with sufficient benevolence and pity.

When we come to the moral principles on which the government is to be administered, we come to what is proper for all conditions of society. Liberty, truth, probity, honor, are declared to be the four cardinal principles of society. I believe that morality, compassion, generosity, are innate elements of the human constitution; that there exists a right independent of force.

Affirmative action is a little like the professional football draft. The NFL awards its No. 1 draft choices to the lowest-ranked team in the league. It doesn't do this out of compassion or guilt. It's done for mutual survival. They understand that a league can only be as strong as its weakest team.