Quotes About Compassion

When we heal ourselves, we heal the world. For as the body is only as healthy as its individual cells, the world is only as healthy as its individual souls.

Patience devastates us with the truth that, in essence, when we fear another, we fear ourselves; when we distrust another, we distrust ourselves; when we hurt another, we hurt ourselves; when we kill another, we kill ourselves.

The courage to hear and embody opens us to a startling secret, that the best chance to be whole is to love whatever gets in the way, until it ceases to be an obstacle.

As Martin Luther King Jr. prophesied, "I believe what the self-centered have torn down, the other-centered will build up.

When feeling badly about ourselves, we often try on other skins rather than understand and care for our own.

Just as a vine or shrub—no matter how often it is cut back—will keep growing to the light, the human heart—no matter how often it is cut—can reassert its impulse to love.

In this world, hate never yet dispelled hate. Only love dispels hate. This is the law, ancient and inexhaustible. —BUDDHA

When we need it most, it is nearly impossible to see ourselves with compassion from the slit of a narrowed mind all tensed for battle.

My own time on earth has led me to believe in two powerful instruments that turn experience into love: holding and listening. For every time I have held or been held, every time I have listened or been listened to, experience burns like wood in that eternal fire and I find myself in the presence of love.

And kindness is enlivened and released through the risk of immediate care. It is the practice of allowing compassion to guide us, the practice of uncovering our intimacy with all things. Together, meaning, truth, and kindness connect everything, forming a lifeline we can hold on to, no matter the storm.

In loving ourselves, we love the world.

Where love is deep much can be accomplished. —SHINICHI SUZUKI

These are quiet braveries we all need: The courage to wait and watch with all of who we are. The courage to admit that we are not alone. The courage to hold each other to the ear of our heart. And the courage to care for things that are broken.

LOVING IS THE practice ground for everything. By loving, we awaken the heart, sending care into the world through our hands. At the same time, suffering keeps breaking what can be broken until we reach what is unbreakable. It keeps undoing what can't last until we are standing on what will last.

The heart doesn't know it's expanding with compassion anymore than a hawk spreading its swings knows it's being a hawk. Nor does someone acting out of love often realize they are being kind.

We cannot eliminate hunger, but we can feed each other. We cannot eliminate loneliness, but we can hold each other. We cannot eliminate pain, but we can live a life of compassion.

In truth, always needing to stay immediate by removing what is no longer real is the working inner definition of sacrifice---giving up with reverence and compassion what no longer works in order to stay close to what is sacred.

Having an honest friend—one before whom you can dump all your heart's pockets and still feel that you are worth something—is a form of wealth that will buy you nothing but will give you everything. And mysteriously and rightly, to find such a friend, we must be such a friend.

We needed people who would give the horse the benefit of the doubt in most situations and who would think through a problem with a horse instead of just reacting to it. We wanted people who could think on their feet but who had soft hands and good hearts.

Love is the commitment to treat a person with dignity and kindness regardless of how you feel about him or her.

If we are going to survive, we must build communities of caring and connection. CECILE ANDREWS

It takes just about the same amount of time to be a nice guy as it does to be a jerk.

There are People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, but sadly no Animals for the Ethical Treatment of People.

If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and man.