quotations about compassion
A kind gesture can reach a wound that only compassion can heal.
STEVE MARABOLI
Life
The highest forms of understanding we can achieve are laughter and human compassion.
RICHARD FEYNMAN
What Do You Care What Other People Think?
Most women bestow their favors upon men, not from Passion, but from Compassion.
ABRAHAM MILLER
Unmoral Maxims
Compassion is not a quality to be cultivated in isolation, aloof from life. It is easy to be compassionate from a distance, when your heart is undisturbed. When you are surrounded by those who love and care for you, when you have built a world where pain is repressed or ignored, you can easily immerse yourself in thoughts of love and tolerance. Yet that is a fragile world, built on foundations that will always crumble. Compassion speaks of the willingness to engage with tragedy, loss, and pain. Its domain is not only the world of those you love and care for, but equally the people who threaten you, the countless people you don't know, the homeless person you meet on the street, and the situations of anger and hatred you recoil from. It is here that you learn about the depths of tolerance and understanding that are possible for each one of us. It is here that you learn about dignity, meaning, and greatness of heart.
CHRISTINA FELDMAN
Compassion: Listening to the Cries of the World
I have a theory which I suspect is rather immoral ... Each of us has only a quantum of compassion. That if we lavish our concern on every stray cat, we never get to the centre of things.
JOHN LE CARRE
Tinker
Compassion is silent but does not remain secluded. It goes out at the sight of trouble, sin, and need.
E. M. BOUNDS
E. M. Bounds: Classic Collection on Prayer
Grief for the calamity of another is pity, and arises from the imagination that the like calamity may befall himself; and, therefore, it is called compassion, or in the phrase of the present time a fellow-feeling.
THOMAS HOBBES
Leviathan
It is only with true love and compassion that we can begin to mend what is broken in the world. It is these two blessed things that can begin to heal all broken hearts.
STEVE MARABOLI
Life
Liberals measure compassion by how many people are given welfare. Conservatives measure compassion by how many people no longer need it.
RUSH LIMBAUGH
"35 Undeniable Truths of Life"
Love and compassion are the mother and father of a smile. We need to create more smiles in our world today. Smiles, after all, pave the way to a happy world.
STEVE MARABOLI
Life
He who pitieth another recommendeth himself; but he who is without compassion deserveth not.
ROBERT DODSLEY
The Economy of Human Life
Compassion is a verb.
THICH NHAT HANH
attributed, A Heart Full of Peace
I know the compassion of others is a relief at first. I don't despise it. But it can't quench pain, it slips through your soul as through a sieve. And when our suffering has been dragged from one pity to another, as from one mouth to another, we can no longer respect or love it.
GEORGES BERNANOS
The Diary of a Country Priest
Pain must enter into its glorified life of memory before it can turn into compassion.
GEORGE ELIOT
Middlemarch
Cruelty is no more the cure of crimes than it is the cure of sufferings; compassion, in the first instance, is good for both; I have known it to bring compunction when nothing else would.
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
Imaginary Conversations
Compassion is the basis of morality.
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER
The Philosophy of Schopenhauer
Compassion is that species of affection which is excited either by the actual distress of its object, or by some impending calamity, which appears inevitable; it is a benevolent sorrow for the sufferings or approaching misery of another.
CHARLES BUCK
A Theological Dictionary
If one doth act in friendly wise,
With no evil thought toward any single creature,
And in so doing becometh proper,
And if he have compassion in his soul
Toward all living beings--this noble one
Doth acquire abundant Virtue.
GAUTAMA BUDDHA
Iti-Vuttaka
The tears of the compassionate are sweeter than dewdrops falling from roses on the bosom of the earth. Shut not thine ear, therefore, against the cries of the poor, neither harden thine heart against the calamities of the innocent.
ROBERT DODSLEY
The Economy of Human Life
Be kind to people whether they deserve your kindness or not. If your kindness reaches the deserving good for you if your kindness reaches the undeserving take joy in your compassion.
JAMES FADIMAN
Essential Sufism