Compassion Quotes

We can only come to terms with our own place in the world by compassionately commiserating with the pang of longing that our brethren experience.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

We nurture our own being by respecting all people and consciously working to mitigate the pain of the world.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

We foster personal meaning out of life by exulting in all of nature, exhibiting a reverence for people, animals, plants, and by expressing compassion and sympathy for the entire community of life.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

There are no other heaven and hell outside the human mind. Goodness is heaven, hatred is hell. Acceptance is religion, sectarianism is blasphemy. Love is holiness, discrimination is sin.

~ Abhijit Naskar

What kind of person is void of compassion? A heartless one. But alas, compassion cannot exist without the endurance of afflictions.

~ Richelle E. Goodrich

If we simply imagined that everyone who crossed our path was living out his or her very last day on Earth, we might treat people as kindly as we ought to each day they lived.

~ Richelle E. Goodrich

It is Christlike to assume that people are trying to do the best they can. I know I am a better person when I cultivate empathy, and I have been blessed for having received it from others. As members of the body of Christ, we are each responsible for creating a space not only of acceptance, but of joy and encouragement for our sisters and brothers and the stories they are working so hard to live well.

~ Ashley Mae Hoiland

Humiliate your enemy is dangerous.

~ Karen Armstrong

Mindfulness helps us to live in harmony with our thoughts, words and actions.

~ Amit Ray

I asked the Dalai Lama what it was like to wake up with joy, and he shared his experience each morning. 'I think if you are an intensely religious believer, as soon as you wake up, you thank God for another day. And you try to do God’s will. For a nontheist like myself, but who is a Buddhist, as soon as I wake up, I remember Buddha’s teaching: the importance of kindness and compassion, wishing something good for others, or at least to reduce their suffering. Then I remember that everything is interrelated, the teaching of interdependence. So then I set my intention for the day: that this day should be meaningful. Meaningful means, if possible, serve and help others. If not possible, then at least not to harm others. That’s a meaningful day.

~ Dalai Lama Xiv

The older I get, the more I believe that the greatest kindness is acceptance.

~ Christina Baker Kline

You must not hate those who do harmful things. The compassionate thing is to do what you can to stop them--for they are harming themselves as well as those who suffer from their actions.

~ Dalai Lama Xiv

With mindfulness, loving kindness, and self-compassion, we can begin to let go of our expectations about how life and those we love should be.

~ Sharon Salzberg

Compassion has more to do with the attitude we bring to our encounters with other people than with any quantifiable metric of giving.

~ Sharon Salzberg

The first step toward feeling compassion for others is to set the intention to try it out.

~ Sharon Salzberg

I always understood the idea of the ultimate redeemer, Christ on the cross. But now I was beginning to see that this is something that is carried out in every one of us, that the purity of unearned suffering is a holy and affective thing It affects not only ourselves, but it touches and changes those around us as well. It opens us and those around us to a force beyond ourselves, a force that is right and moral, the force of righteous truth that is at the basis of human conscience. Suffering puts us and those around us in touch with our consciences. It opens and touches our hearts. It makes us feel compassion when we need to and guilt if we must.

~ John Lewis

Changing the way LGBTQ individualswith chronic or life-limiting illnesses are cared for requires a paradigm shift in the way we (collectively, as health care professionals) approach the conversation about what it means to be inclusive in our compassion. You don’t need to change your religious or moral beliefs to provide good care to LGBTQ individuals.

~ Kimberly D. Acquaviva

Sympathy is imagining the pain. Empathy is having suffered through it first.

~ Richelle E. Goodrich

Empathy is a hand thick with scars offering you a bandage.

~ Richelle E. Goodrich

The soft heart is not a thing to harden but a treasure to protect. For soft hearts extend mercy, compassion, refuge, and God’s redemption to the world.

~ Richelle E. Goodrich

Kindness is going out of your way to perform favors regarded as wonderful by the recipient.

~ Richelle E. Goodrich

Surrendering to the best of my abilities when the price of life has outweighed its benefit may be a compassionate choice for me and those around me.

~ Lisa J. Shultz

The advice to kill your darlings has been attributed to various authors across the various galaxies... and Mister Heist hated them all.Why teach young writers to edit out whatever it is they feel most passionate about?Better to kill everything in their writing they DON'T love as much.Until only the darlings remain.

~ Brian K. Vaughan

Self-compassion is like a muscle. The more we practice flexing it, especially when life doesn’t go exactly according to plan (a frequent scenario for most of us), the stronger and more resilient our compassion muscle becomes.

~ Sharon Salzberg

How do we change the world? By sending out a ripple of love that will affect one person at a time.

~ Nanette Mathews

Be the love the world needs. Think and act from your heart.

~ Nanette Mathews

Human beings have a deep need to bond and form connections. If we can’t connect with each other, we will connect with whatever we can find … It is disconnection that drives addiction.

~ Christopher Kennedy Lawford

Compassion is the most powerful tool you can have when it comes to healing addictions of any kind. Put simply, what your partner needs most from you is compassion.

~ Christopher Kennedy Lawford

No one consciously chooses addiction to a substance or behavior over his partner. There are always reasons – powerful ones – why a person retreats into addiction.

~ Christopher Kennedy Lawford

Ignite the fire of loving kindness in your soul, fuel that fire with understanding and compassion for others, and start a bonfire of love worldwide.

~ Nanette Mathews

I found out too that you are bound to be jostled in the crowded street of life. That in itself need not be dangerous unless you have the open razors of personal vanity in your pants pocket. The passers-by don't hurt you, but if you go around like that, they make you hurt yourself.

~ Zora Neale Hurston

Compassion has been advocated by all the great faiths because it has been found to be the safest and surest means of attaining enlightenment.

~ Karen Armstrong

It is not a coincidence that you and your partner are together. You each have something to learn from one another …. The most important thing you can do to support your partner in his [or her] recovery is to show that you are truly supportive and on his [or her] side.

~ Christopher Kennedy Lawford

No matter how smart YOU THINK you are or how smart others THINK that you are, you're never going to be somewhere OR someone you're not. _nickc

~ Nick Catricala

Every person struggles with the self to find and kindle their special radiance, which comes from cultivating kindness, charity, and love.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

I beg you, alight and join your sorrow with mine: misfortune wanders everywhere, and settles now upon one and now upon another.

~ Aeschylus

Compassion Enlivens us and enhances our immune system. The more we pour out, the more we find available. 

~ Angie Karan

The greatest lesson you might ever learn in this life is this: It is not about you.

~ Shannon L. Alder

When the wind blows in your face,when you feel you are losing your head,when the going gets tough,and when all else fails,look inside you,you are not alone.

~ Malak El Halabi

Boundless compassion for all living beings is the surest and most certain guarantee of pure moral conduct, and needs no casuistry. Whoever is filled with it will assuredly injure no one, do harm to no one, encroach on no man's rights; he will rather have regard for every one, forgive every one, help every one as far as he can, and all his actions will bear the stamp of justice and loving-kindness.

~ Arthur Schopenhauer