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
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
Some people's compassion is worse than their indifference or even hatred.
E. P. DAY
attributed, Day's Collacon
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
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"
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
A kind gesture can reach a wound that only compassion can heal.
STEVE MARABOLI
Life
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
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
Compassion is a verb.
THICH NHAT HANH
attributed, A Heart Full of Peace
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 the basis of morality.
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER
The Philosophy of Schopenhauer
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
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 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
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 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
Pain must enter into its glorified life of memory before it can turn into compassion.
GEORGE ELIOT
Middlemarch