quotations about compassion
The ugliest thing I have ever seen is a human being without compassion.
ANONYMOUS
Meditation is a flower and compassion is its fragrance. Exactly like that it happens. The flower blooms and the fragrance spreads on the winds in all directions, to be carried to the very ends of earth. But the basic thing is the blooming of the flower. Man is also carrying a potentiality for flowering within him. Until and unless the inner being of man flowers, the fragrance of compassion is not possible. Compassion cannot be practiced. It is not a discipline. You cannot manage it. It is beyond you. If you meditate, one day, suddenly, you become aware of a new phenomenon, absolutely strange--from your being, compassion is flowing towards the whole of existence. Undirected, unaddressed, it is moving to the very ends of existence.
OSHO
Compassion: The Ultimate Flowering of Love
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
When we know ourselves to be connected to all others, acting compassionately is simply the natural thing to do.
RACHEL NAOMI REMEN
The Heart of Learning
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
He who pitieth another recommendeth himself; but he who is without compassion deserveth not.
ROBERT DODSLEY
The Economy of Human Life
Let our compassion express itself in efforts to bring the erring back to sacred principles, and if they persist, let us pity them the more for a blindness so fatal to themselves.
S. E. D. CHARNAGE
attributed, Day's Collacon
The highest forms of understanding we can achieve are laughter and human compassion.
RICHARD FEYNMAN
What Do You Care What Other People Think?
Compassion is a Shepherd,
Always tending his herd.
PEGGY HEADLUND
The Spirit Moves
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
If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.
DALAI LAMA XIV
The Art of Happiness
Most women bestow their favors upon men, not from Passion, but from Compassion.
ABRAHAM MILLER
Unmoral Maxims
If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete.
JACK KORNFIELD
Buddha's Little Instruction Book
Some people's compassion is worse than their indifference or even hatred.
E. P. DAY
attributed, Day's Collacon
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
Compassion is a verb.
THICH NHAT HANH
attributed, A Heart Full of Peace
Compassion is the basis of morality.
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER
The Philosophy of Schopenhauer
All I ever wanted was to reach out and touch another human being not just with my hands but with my heart.
TAHEREH MAFI
Shatter Me
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
Pain must enter into its glorified life of memory before it can turn into compassion.
GEORGE ELIOT
Middlemarch