Quotes About Compassion

At least we should learn to understand our fellow beings, for we are powerless to stop their misery, their ignominy, their suffering, their weakness, and their death.

Wherever I set my foot, not just a courtroom, could be a place of worship. My

When will suffering cease? Not until individuality is lost.

The Dalai Lama has said, "Don't try to use what you learn from Buddhism to be a better Buddhist; use it to be a better whatever-you-already-are.

The Buddha said anger has a "poisoned root and honeyed tip.

What there is to be proud of? One answer is: Darwin-like behavior. Go above and beyond the call of a smoothly functioning conscience; help those who aren´t likely to help you in return, and do so when nobody is watching

There's no doubt that meditation training has allowed some people to become essentially indifferent to what otherwise would have been unbearable pain.

In the end, boundless empathy is what utilitarianism is.

After all, true brotherly love is unconditional compassion; it harbors utter doubt about the validity of harming anyone, however repugnant their behavior. And in a society where no one gets punished for anything, repugnant behavior will grow.

It's true that Darwin didn't live the optimally utilitarian life. No one ever has. Still, as he prepared to die, he could rightly have reflected on a life decently and compassionately lived, a string of duties faithfully discharged, a painful, if only partial, struggle against the currents of selfishness whose source he was the first man to see. It wasn't a perfect life; but human beings are capable of worse.

Quizá la mejor manera de decirlo sea que la iluminación y la liberación se refuerzan mutuamente: cuantas más cosas que nos liberan del sufrimiento hacemos, más clara es nuestra visión, y cuanto más clara sea nuestra visión, más fácil nos resultará hacer las cosas que nos conducen a la liberación del sufrimiento, lo cual, a su vez, nos permitirá tener aún más claridad de visión, y así sucesivamente.

Bhikkhu Bodhi

three marks of existence

According to the teaching of the Buddha, the idea of self is an imaginary, false belief which has no corresponding reality, and it produces harmful thoughts of 'me' and 'mine,' selfish desire, craving, attachment, hatred, ill-will, conceit, pride, egoism, and other defilements, impurities, and problems. It is the source of all the troubles in the world from personal conflicts to wars between nations. In short, to this false view can be traced all the evil in the world.

According to the teaching of the Buddha, the idea of self is an imaginary, false belief which has no corresponding reality, and it produces harmful thoughts of 'me' and 'mine,' selfish desire, craving, attachment, hatred, ill-will, conceit, pride, egoism, and other defilements, impurities, and problems.

If you don't feed a stray cat, it quits coming to your door.

I don't have a hostile disposition toward humankind per se. In fact, I feel quite warmly toward humankind. It's individual humans I have trouble with.

So, yes, we need to reject the core evolutionary value of the specialness of self. Indeed, there's probably never been a time in human history when this rejection was more vital.

In every guilty man, there is an element of innocence. This is what makes any absolute condemnation revolting. We do not think enough about pain" Albert Camus

In one of her last works, The Need for Roots, she wrote: "There exists an obligation towards every human being for the sole reason that he or she is a human being, without any other condition requiring to be fulfilled, and even without any recognition of such obligation on the part of the individual concerned.

There are too many people, and too few human beings.

A soldier asked Abba Mius if God accepted repentance. After the old man had taught him many things he said, "Tell me my dear [friend], if your cloak is torn, do you throw it away?" He replied, "No, I mend it and use it again." The old man said to him, "If you are so careful about your cloak, will not God be equally careful of his creatures?" (Apoth., Mius 3, p. 150)

Será que a veces hay que callar, no por miedo ni menos por pudor, sino por compasión?

Amor, piedad, gratitud a la vida, a los libros y al mundo me galvanizaban el nervio azul del alma.