Compassion Quotes

Awakening self-compassion is often the greatest challenge people face on the spiritual path.

~ Tara Brach

The bread which you hold back belongs to the hungry; the coat, which you guard in your locked storage-chests, belongs to the naked; the footwear mouldering in your closet belongs to those without shoes. The silver that you keep hidden in a safe place belongs to the one in need. Thus, however many are those whom you could have provided for, so many are those whom you wrong.

~ Basil The Great

Bragging about your compassion is the first step towards feeling a genuine emotion.

~ Bauvard

They looked at me, and were so full of delight in the pleasure they were giving me that some final thread of resistance gave way and I understood not only how entirely generous they were but also that generosity might be the greatest pleasure there is.

~ William Maxwell

It is always so, when we are unhappy we feel more strongly the unhappiness of others; our feeling is not shattered, but becomes concentrated...

~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

If people can live through genocide and retain compassion, if they can take strength in pain, if they are able, still, to laugh, then certainly we can learn something from them.

~ Eric Greitens

I always try to share with others the idea that in order to become compassionate it is not necessary to become religious.

~ Dalai Lama Xiv

A visitor asked Lincoln what good news he could take home from an audience with the august executive. The president spun a story about a machine that baffled a chess champion by beating him thrice. The stunned champ cried while inspecting the machine, There's a man in there!Lincoln's good news, he confided from the heights of leadership, was that there was in fact a man in there.

~ Shelby Foote

There is a kind of virtue that lies not in extraordinary actions, not in saving poor orphans from burning buildings, but in steadfastly working for a world where orphans are not poor and buildings comply with decent fire codes.

~ Randy Cohen

This is the shade of difference: the door of the physician should never be shut, the door of the priest should always be open.

~ Victor Hugo

The news can be poison to your soul, don't let it kill your joy, be compassionate but not consumed. Be empathetic not enraged.

~ Rob Liano

The problem with churches of all sorts,” he continued, “is that so often they ignore the key teachings of the Sermon on the Mount, like the doctrine of love. So often we ask God to be on our side instead of asking that we be blessed enough to be on his. That said, the wheat and the tares must grow up together, and in the days of harvest they will be separated properly.

~ David Holdsworth

(...) I let go, crying and unable to stop because God was such a dirty crook, contemptible skunk, that's what he was for doing that thing to that woman. Come down out of the skies, you God, come on down and I'll hammer your face all over the city of Los Angeles, you miserable unpardonable prankster. If it wasn't for you, this woman would not have been so maimed, and neither would the world, (...)

~ John Fante

If you see your brother in need, it doesn't matter if you already gave somewhere else. You should be open to the idea of God using you to meet your brother's unexpected need.

~ Andy Stanley

You can not hope to arrive at harmony in your life while stirring up disturbances in anothers...

~ Rasheed Ogunlaru

Now there are many, many people in the world, but relatively few with whom we interact, and even fewer who cause us problems. So when you come across such a chance for practicing patience and tolerance, you should treat it with gratitude. It is rare. Just as having unexpectedly found a treasure in your own house, you should be happy and grateful toward your enemy for providing you that precious opportunity. Because if you are ever to be successful in your practice of patience and tolerance, which are critical factors in counteracting negative emotions, it is due to your own efforts and also the opportunity provided by your enemy.

~ Dalai Lama Xiv

We're merely one tree with various types, shapes and sizes of leaves that all wave differently in the breeze

~ Rasheed Ogunlaru

To me, empathy and compassion are among the bravest of emotions ... and faith, the bravest of convictions.

~ Gerard De Marigny

There are ultimately two choices in life: to fight it or to embrace it. If you fight it you will lose - if you embrace it you become one with it and you'll be lived.

~ Rasheed Ogunlaru

Am I ever angry or frustrated? I only feel angry sometimes when I see waste, when things that we waste are what people need, things that would save them from dying. Frustrated? No, never.

~ Mother Teresa

Tomorrow's leaders will not lead dictating from the front, nor pushing from the back. They will lead from the centre - from the heart

~ Rasheed Ogunlaru

Need' now means wanting someone else's money. 'Greed' means wanting to keep your own. 'Compassion' is when a politician arranges the transfer.

~ Joseph Sobran

Among other things, neuroplasticity means that emotions such as happiness and compassion can be cultivated in much the same way that a person can learn through repetition to play golf and basketball or master a musical instrument, and that such practice changes the activity and physical aspects of specific brain areas.

~ Andrew Weil

The universe is not for man alone, but is a theater of evolution for all living beings. Live and let live is its guiding principle. 'Ahimsa Paramo Dharmah' - Non-injury is the highest religion.

~ Virchand Gandhi

You ought not to love the individuals of your domestic circle less, but to love those who exist beyond it more. Once make the feelings of confidence and of affection universal, and the distinctions of property and power will vanish; nor are they to be abolished without substituting something equivalent in mischief to them, until all mankind shall acknowledge an entire community of rights.

~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

I can’t hope to convey the full effect of the embraces and avowals, but I can perhaps offer a crumb of counsel. If there is anybody known to you who might benefit from a letter or a visit, do not on any account postpone the writing or the making of it. The difference made will almost certainly be more than you have calculated

~ Christopher Hitchens

It made Daniel think. The people who had the least were the most willing to share. He outlined a dictum that he would believe the rest of his life: the more people have, the less the give. Similarly, generous cultures produce less waste because excess is shared, whereas stingy nations fill their landfills with leftovers.

~ Mark Sundeen

The master demon Screwtape identifies elitist humanity's tendency toward an ingrained habit of belittling anything that concerns the great mass of their fellow men.

~ C.s. Lewis

Since the state must necessarily provide subsistence for the criminal poor while undergoing punishment, not to do the same for the poor who have not offended is to give a premium on crime.

~ John Stuart Mill

Who are we to make such a decision? To allow another living being - any living being - to die, when ours is the power to prevent it? - Reed Richards (Mister Fantastic)

~ John Byrne

Dare we care at all about current fashions if that means reducing our ability to help hungry neighbors? How many more luxuries should we buy for ourselves and our children when others are dying for lack of bread?

~ Ronald J. Sider

Lately it's started to seem to me that here in America our fetishization of self-reliance has taken a wrong turn and has helped enable us to jettison compassion as a national value while still maintaining a vision of ourselves as essentially well-meaning. It hasn't taken a whole lot of common sense, given the evidence of the last few years, to puzzle out the heartlessness of unregulated capitalism, and yet our political class has embraced even more fervently the notion of every man for himself, even given the ever-growing numbers such a philosophy leaves behind.

~ Jim Shepard

John has a narrow mind. For him, neither the beauty nor the prosperity of the city of Ephesus is worth a second glance. Ephesus was situated at the end of the Silk Road from China and the caravan route from India which used to pass through the Parthian Empire en route to the West. But the prophet is quite unaware that this particular world exists at all. Even culture means absolutely nothing to him; for example, in 18:22 he rejoices that not only song but also the sound of the flute have disappeared. The world which he knows is limited to the seven churches whose Christianity corresponded with his own; and that in but a single province of the Roman Empire, namely Asia. As to the rest, he is only familiar with the mother church in Jerusalem and the sister church in Rome.John is utterly obsessed by Rome. The fact that this particular metropolis had bestowed both law and peace upon no less than one-half of the world never got through to him at all. He is also quite oblivious of the fact that Rome oppresses nations and exploits slaves. He could not care less about national or social considerations. He abominates the whore on the seven hills simply because Rome is persecuting Christians. This is precisely what the Apocalypse is all about: innocent suffering.

~ Gilles Quispel

While there is Ego, you will never be one with the universe... Or love your fellow man.

~ Solange Nicole

Really good writing has purpose and that purpose should be to shape other minds to desire truth and a more noble purpose in life and to become more thoughtful and knowledgable about important things like being kind and loving towards all living beings on our planet and not just humans but all animals.

~ Susan Waterfield

No daylight to separate us.Only kinship. Inching ourselves closer to creating a community of kinship such that God might recognize it. Soon we imagine, with God, this circle of compassion. Then we imagine no one standing outside of that circle, moving ourselves closer to the margins so that the margins themselves will be erased. We stand there with those whose dignity has been denied. We locate ourselves with the poor and the powerless and the voiceless. At the edges, we join the easily despised and the readily left out. We stand with the demonized so that the demonizing will stop. We situate ourselves right next to the disposable so that the day will come when we stop throwing people away.

~ Gregory J. Boyle

There are those who do not hold that there is any innate goodness to mankind. To them I say, had you lived my life, you would not believe it. I have known the depths to which mortals are capable of descending, and I have seen the heights. I have seen how kindness and compassion may grow in the unlikeliest of places, as the mountain flower forces its way through the stern rock.

~ Jacqueline Carey

Unfortunately we treat others as we treat ourselves. We should try being genuinely kind to ourselves and the rest will come naturally, like a Platinum Rule.

~ Erica Goros

he's not a piece of meat you can job off the market by the pound. because, if you do,maish, if you do, you'll rot in hell.

~ Rod Serling

As I crawled out of the abyss of combat and over the rail of the Sea Runner, I realized that compassion for the sufferings of others is a burden to those who have it. As Wilfred Owen's poem Insensibility puts it so well, those who feel most of others suffer most in war.

~ Eugene B. Sledge