Quotes About Compassion

with every action we take, we send love or suffering into the web that connects us.

Setting the intention to practice kindness toward one's partner or family members or friends does not preclude getting angry or upset.

Kindness is not a fixed trait that we either have or lack, but more like a muscle that can be developed and strengthened.

If we harm someone else, we're inevitably also hurting ourselves. Some quality of sensitivity and awareness has to shut down for us to be able to objectify someone else, to deny them as a living, feeling being—someone who wants to be happy, just as we do.

When we do our best to treat others with kindness, it's often a struggle to determine which actions best express our love and care for ourselves.

Letting go of the belief that we're powerless to help relieve our own suffering enhances our ability not only to heal but also to genuinely love and receive the love of others.

Awareness levels the playing field. We are all humans doing the best we can.

The notion of loving oneself has gotten an undeservedly bad rap, which goes something like this: self-love is narcissistic, selfish, self-indulgent, the supreme delusion of a runaway ego looking out for "number one." In fact, just the opposite is true.

We are born ready to love and be loved. It is our birthright.

Living in a story of a limited self—to any degree—is not love.

Concepts such as loving kindness should never be used as weapons against our real feelings.

As human beings, we're capable of greatness of spirit, an ability to go beyond the circumstances we find ourselves in, to experience a vast sense of connection to all of life.

The simple act of being completely attentive & present to another person is an act of love, and it fosters unshakeable well-being.

It's all too easy to slot someone into the category of "needing help" and not to recognize the tremendous help they are offering to others.

Self-love is an unfolding process that gains strength over time, not a goal with a fixed end point.

Moreover, a mind that is saturated by lovingkindness cannot be overcome by fear; even if fear should arise, it will not overpower such a mind.

With our close friends, family members, and lovers, we hope to create a special world, one in which we can expect to be treated fairly, with care, tenderness, and compassion.

Buddhism has a term for the happiness we feel at someone else's success or good fortune. Sympathetic joy, as it is known, invites us to celebrate for others.

These are times when sympathetic joy comes naturally, but in a complex relationship the heart may not leap up so easily.

We truly can reconfigure how we see ourselves and reclaim the love for ourselves that we're innately capable of.

The more we identify and acknowledge moments when we're unable to share in someone else's pleasure and ask ourselves whether another person's happiness truly jeopardizes our own, the more we pave the way for experiencing sympathetic joy

Although love is often depicted as starry-eyed and sweet, love for the self is made of tougher stuff.

Love can uproot fear or anger or guilt, because it is a greater power.

Sympathetic joy is a practice. It takes time and effort to free ourselves of the scarcity story that most of us have learned along the way, the idea that happiness is a competition, and that someone else is grabbing all the joy.