Quotes About Compassion

You can't get sick enough to help sick people get better. You cannot get poor enough to help poor people thrive.

It is good to get out of the mode of blaming, because that get s you nowhere, and into the mode of acknowledging that every step of the way, you did the best that you knew to do. Abraham -- G 6/7/91

One who does not condemn, never has to forgive. Your Inner Being will never forgive you because your Inner Being has never condemned you. Abraham -- G 6/13/92

If one knows, one cares; if one does not care, one does not know.

He tells them that there is a line that separates killing bugs from killing frogs, and that no matter how hard it is, that line must never be crossed

When you say I love you very much , and your asthma's attack occurs, there is no time for palaver because instead of very you have to say call the ambulance .

No quiero que adoptemos. Bastante difícil debe ser ya tener en casa un hijo propio. No quiero el de otra persona. - ¿Y si nos compramos un perro? - No vamos a comprar ningún perro. Adoptemos uno. Hay muchos perros abandonados que necesitan un hogar.

Except that when it came to choosing between smiles and thanks on the one hand, and the good of society on the other, this driver knew what it had to be.

There are clear rules governing the relationship between the homeless and the average person on the street: speak to each other politely; don't look each other in the eye; don't ask for names; and don't give more than twenty dollars.

And when they started moving, he looked in the rear-view mirror and gave Eddie a sad wink, which somehow made the whole thing almost bearable.

Give your heart to everybody you meet. The rest is pretense.

The older I get, the more I realize how rare it is to meet a kindred spirit.

Understanding that he relies on all that surrounds him, a knight is kind above all.

If we long to save the whole world but we can't deal with our own family and friends, something has gone wrong in our understanding of what it means to be human.

There's a bumper sticker that says, "If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention." Anyone who never gets angry when he sees their friends and loved ones doing things that are harmful to themselves or others has to be pretty numb to the deep sadness of suffering. Anyone who just walks on by when she sees humans being treated like objects needs to take a second look. And a third one.

Here's my personal definition of a Buddhist: someone who prioritizes cultivating her relationship to her own heartmind—and her relationship to other sentient beings—above whatever else she might achieve in life.

Running for the hills is not the way to go. We live in a time where there are actually fewer and fewer places left to run away to. Therefore, it's imperative to find ways to use your energy to dive into—not run from—existing paths of livelihood. A hip-hop mogul or an oil executive are powerful already. There's no reason they couldn't be powerfully selfless and compassionate as well.

The basic premise of Buddhism is that there is no savior to worship: nobody is going to save you from your own mind. Nobody can get into the heart of your experience and fix anything for you. If you want to make your own internal experience more hospitable, only you can do that work. Others can always support and guide you and spark insights, but ultimately you are your own boss and the agent of understanding your mind and opening your heart. Nothing

In most cases, the truth is a blade that does not need to be sharpened, and we almost never need to twist the knife. Because as a listener we can empathize with the fear that what we hear might hurt, we can also work to apply gentleness when speaking. I

Compassion is just a way to work with a big mess, because compassion flourishes when you feel inclusive of reality, and as long as people exist, reality will be a big mess.

Within the realm of mental reactions, when you know what is yours and what is someone else's, it makes it easier to help another human being, because you no longer take their confusion so personally.

The doormat version of idiot compassion always involves allowing ourselves to feel walked all over in the name of idealizing what it means to be patient with another person's aggressive behavior. It's an unwillingness to face the uncomfortable truth that it's okay to feel angry and irritated.

Thinking that we have to always burn our candle at both ends in order to benefit others is perhaps the greatest idiot compassion of all.

Love requires learning to love ourselves in the mirror, and learning to look other people in the eye. Buddhism, in turn, asks us to pause and look at even the subtlest causal connections and take our appreciation of them to greater depths.