Quotes About Compassion

The Golden Rule requires self-knowledge; it asks that we use our own feelings as a guide to our behavior with others. If we treat ourselves harshly, this is the way we are likely to treat other people. So we need to acquire a healthier and more balanced knowledge of our strengths as well as our weaknesses. As

Instead of engaging in uncharitable controversies, in which everybody insisted that he alone was right, a humble acknowledgement of our lack of insight should draw us together.

Compassion has been advocated by all the great faiths because it has been found to be the safest and surest means of attaining enlightenment.

Compassion has dropped so far out of sight these days that many are confused about what is required. It even inspires overt hostility.

When these impoverished, indebted folk asked him what they should do, he told them to share what little they had with those who were even worse off—an ethic that would become central to Jesus's movement: "Whoever has two shirts must share with him who has none, and whoever has food must do the same."12

All the great spiritual traditions have insisted that what holds us back from enlightenment is selfishness and egotism; they have also said that a practical concern for everybody (not simply those who belong to your own class or those you find congenial) was the test of true spirituality.

In other words, when making an effort to understand something strange and alien to you, it is important to assume that the speaker share the same human nature as yourself and that, even though your belief systems may differ, you both have the same idea of what constitutes truth.

But Christina never forgot that "when I was a child, I needed only one person to understand my suffering and pain.… One is very important."5

Joden moesten de Tora strikter naleven dan ooit tevoren. Het was niet langer voldoende geen moord te plegen, ze moesten ook hun woede inhouden. Niet alleen overspel was verboden, een man mocht zelfs niet begerig naar een vrouw kijken. De oude wetten van vergelding - een oog voor een oog en een tand voor een tand - werden opzij gezet: de joden moesten nu zelfs wie hen op de rechterwang sloeg, hun linkerwang toekeren en hun vijanden liefhebben.

what Tibetan Buddhists call "the inability to bear the sight of another's sorrow," so that we feel it almost as intensely as we feel our own. We

Holiness in Islam was inclusive rather than exclusive.

we sometimes fail to recognize the signs of poverty, loneliness, grief, fear, and desolation in our own city, our own village, or our own family.

The good leader in war is not warlike The good fighter is not impetuous; The best conqueror of the enemy is he who never takes the offensive. The man who gets the most out of men is the one who treats them with humility.3 Tyrants

true insight does not consist of the acquisition of information but comes from mastering our egotism and greed.5

It is also necessary in both public and private life to refrain consistently and empathically from inflicting pain. To act or speak violently out of spite, chauvinism or self-interest, to impoverish, exploit or deny basic rights to anybody, and to incite hatred by denigrating others—even our enemies—is a denial of our common humanity.

cultivate an informed empathy with the suffering of all human beings—even those regarded as enemies.

Martin Luther King Jr. believed that the highest point of Jesus's life was the moment when he forgave his executioners

Qur'an insisted tirelessly. "If one is patient in adversity and forgives—this, behold, is indeed something to set one's heart upon.

the Golden Rule, which asks us to look into our own hearts, discover what gives us pain, and then refuse, under any circumstance whatsoever, to inflict that pain on anybody else.

Compassion can be defined, therefore, as an attitude of principled, consistent altruism. The

I turned to the animal world from the world of men; my heart was heavy with the tragedy of the night.

Listening is more than just being quiet for a moment. It's not just the pause we were talking about earlier. Listening includes paying attention to the whole person, and especially their emotions.

Listening requires attending to the other person's heart.

When showering life-giving words on another human, don't just pick the people you know well. Notice the one who least expects to be noticed.