Quotes About Compassion

Writers owed their readers a duty of care, of mercy.

Older men were better companions, they were seasoned lovers, they knew the world, they knew themselves. Unlike younger men, they held their emotions in balance. They had read more, seen more, they were warmer, kinder, less boastful, more tolerant, less violent. They were more interesting, they could choose the wine. They had more money.

It was once convenient to think biblically, to believe we're surrounded for our benefit by edible automata on land and sea. Now it turns out that even fish can feel pain. This is the growing complication of the modern condition, the expanding circle of moral sympathy.

After a certain age, when the remaining years first take on their finite aspect, and you begin to feel for yourself the first chill, you watch a dying man with a closer, more brotherly interest.

She had the power to remove a child from an unkind parent and she sometimes did. But remove herself from an unkind husband? When she was weak and desolate? Where was her protective judge?

No child is an island. She thought her responsibilities ended at the court room walls. But how could they? He came to find her, wanting what everyone wanted, and what only free-thinking people, not the supernatural, could give. Meaning.

It wasn't only wickedness and scheming that made people unhappy, it was confusion and misunderstanding; above all, it was the failure to grasp the simple truth that other people are as real as you. And only in a story could you enter these different minds and show how they had an equal value. That was the only moral a story need have.

Imagining what it is like to be someone other than yourself is at the core of humanity. It is the essence of compassion, and it is the beginning of morality.

self-interest and kindness were best not separated

El amor sufre luengo y es amable; el amor no envidia; el amor no se jacta, no es pomposo, no se comporta de una forma indecorosa, no busca su provecho, no se deja provocar, no medita maldades; se deleita no en la iniquidad, sino en la verdad...

It wasn't only wickedness and scheming that made people unhappy, it was confusion and misunderstanding; above all, it was the failure to grasp the simple truth that other people are as real as you.

Vous n'avez tué personne aujourd'hui ? Mais combien en avez-vous laissé mourir ?

Cuando te pregunté qué significaba estar enamorado, me dijiste que en sentido profundo, más allá del deseo, era un tierno interés por el bienestar de otra persona.

She listed some relevant ingredients, goals towards which a child might grow. Economic and moral freedom, virtue, compassion and altruism, satisfying work through engagement with demanding tasks, a flourishing network of personal relationships, earning the esteem of others, pursuing larger meanings to one's existence, and having at the centre of one's life one or a small number of significant relations defined above all by love.

Regarding yourself as a highly rational and compassionate being does not make you rational and compassionate in all circumstances.

There is a compassion in rational thought that is sometimes missing in religious conviction.

The key to all human interaction, Morley often advised me, is simply to ask others about themselves. Nothing else matters- and everything then follows.

A man isn't a god. Committing errors is part of his attraction as a human being; it inspires a feeling of warmth toward him, and so admiration and devotion are aroused.

In the silence that filled those moments, Khaled realized that there was someone who loved her more than he did.

as long as one's decided to give, he might as well give the best he's got.

I think I've been rather reasonable about this whole situation. How do you figure? They are still breathing, aren't they?

The only people who can have normal are the ones unaffected by all the fucked-up shit that happens around them." - Curran

I saved the baby. I saved her. For you. - Bran

They're fanatics. It's like expecting humanity from a falling rock. It's not going to have a fit of compassion and not crack your skull open.