quotations about compassion
Compassion is not just feeling with someone, but seeking to change the situation. Frequently people think compassion and love are merely sentimental. No! They are very demanding. If you are goint to be compassionate, be prepared for action!
DESMOND TUTU
Psychology Today, Mar/Apr 2005
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
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
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
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 alone stands apart from the continuous traffic between good and evil within us. Compassion is the antitoxin of the soul: where there is compassion even the most poisonous impulses remain relatively harmless.
ERIC HOFFER
In Our Time
Compassion goes on giving, but knows no feeling of giving, knows no feeling that "I am the giver." And then existence goes on responding in thousands of ways. You give a little love and from everywhere love starts flowing. The man of compassion is not trying to snatch anything away, he is not greedy. He does not wait for the return, he goes on giving. He goes on getting too, but that is not in his mind.
OSHO
Compassion: The Ultimate Flowering of Love
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
Compassion is not pity ... compassion never considers an object as weak or inferior. Compassion, one might say, works from a strength born of awareness of shared weakness, and not from someone else's weakness. And from the awareness of the mutuality of us all. Thus to put down another as in pity is to put down oneself.
MATTHEW FOX
A Spirituality Named Compassion
Compassion is a verb.
THICH NHAT HANH
attributed, A Heart Full of Peace
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
If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.
DALAI LAMA XIV
The Art of Happiness
Compassion is not just a feeling; it is a response to pain that is deeply rooted in wisdom. It is a commitment to alleviating suffering and the cause of suffering in all its forms.
CHRISTINA FELDMAN
Compassion: Listening to the Cries of the World
If we yield to false compassion, industry will go to ruin; sloth will predominate if man has nothing to hope or fear from his own exertions; all being secure of subsistence, will look to their neighbors for support, being idle in their own business and a burden to the public.
TACITUS
attributed, Day's Collacon
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
He who pitieth another recommendeth himself; but he who is without compassion deserveth not.
ROBERT DODSLEY
The Economy of Human Life
Compassion is a Shepherd,
Always tending his herd.
PEGGY HEADLUND
The Spirit Moves
Compassion is the basis of morality.
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER
The Philosophy of Schopenhauer
We have to make mistakes, its how we learn compassion for others.
CURTIS SITTENFELD
American Wife
The symptoms of compassion and benevolence, in some people, are like those minute guns which warn you that you are in deadly peril.
MADAME SWETCHINE
"Airelles,", The Writings of Madame Swetchine