quotations about compassion
Most women bestow their favors upon men, not from Passion, but from Compassion.
ABRAHAM MILLER
Unmoral Maxims
Some people's compassion is worse than their indifference or even hatred.
E. P. DAY
attributed, Day's Collacon
The ugliest thing I have ever seen is a human being without compassion.
ANONYMOUS
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
The highest forms of understanding we can achieve are laughter and human compassion.
RICHARD FEYNMAN
What Do You Care What Other People Think?
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
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
He who pitieth another recommendeth himself; but he who is without compassion deserveth not.
ROBERT DODSLEY
The Economy of Human 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
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
Compassion is a Shepherd,
Always tending his herd.
PEGGY HEADLUND
The Spirit Moves
We have to make mistakes, its how we learn compassion for others.
CURTIS SITTENFELD
American Wife
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
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
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 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
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
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