Quotes About Compassion

Friends, I was pretty sure, lift their friends up; they don't weigh them down like a sack full of stones

He was a husband. There is a name for what he is now. Widower. He had never fully appreciated, in all the years he took patients' medical histories, how it must feel to check that box.

I don't think that we have any right to have a sort of generalized criticism, if not hatred, of the people who hated us, because then we only descend to the level of those people who persecuted us for so many years. New

The world is full of suffering and exploitation, and that fact keeps one in touch with the realities that make one's behavior a moral challenge.

the number-one job is to take care of each other. I didn't always know that, but I know it now.

I have saved your life on no other terms than I would be glad to be saved myself: and it may, one time or other, be my lot to be taken up in the same condition. Besides, said he, when I carry you to the Brazils, so great a way from your own country, if I should take from you what you have, you will be starved there, and then I only take away that life I have given.

Ismét fiút szültem, pompás fiúcska lett, de csak két hónapig élt; mikor azonban leküzdöttem magamban a gyengéd anyai szeretetet, nem is bántam már annyira, hogy a fiúcska meghalt, hiszen mérhetetlen sok gonddal járt volna egy gyermek visszautazásunk során.

How mercifully can our Creator treat His creatures, even in those conditions in which they seemed to be overwhelmed in destruction!

and for which the very name of a Spaniard is reckoned to be frightful and terrible, to all people of humanity or of Christian compassion; as if the kingdom of Spain were particularly eminent for the produce of a race of men who were without principles of tenderness, or the common bowels of pity to the miserable, which is reckoned to be a mark of generous temper in the mind. (2)

si los hombres compararan su situación con la de otros que están en peores circunstancias y no con los que están mejor, se sentirían agradecidos y no se quejarían de sus desgracias.

Aber, sprach sie noch immer lächelnd, dieser Verdienst kann dir nicht Nahrung und Kleider schaffen, wer wird denn dem kleinen Fräulein die Kleider kaufen?

He knew as well the stories of generosity and courage and self-sacrifice: the clergy who encouraged and comforted all who came – including the outcast Catholics, Jews, and Dissenters; the doctors who tended the poor without fees; the officials working quickly to calm panic and stave off disaster; the watchmen, the deadcart drivers, the 'buryers' at the pits; the parents and children and servants and friends who encouraged, comforted, tended, worked, saved, and mourned.

The most powerful form of nondefensive listening, of course, is empathy: actually hearing the feelings behind what is being said.

A series of studies by Marian Radke-Yarrow and Carolyn Zahn-Waxler at the National Institute of Mental Health showed that a large part of this difference in empathic concern had to do with how parents disciplined their children. Children, they found, were more empathic when the discipline included calling strong attention to the distress their misbehavior caused someone else: "Look how sad you've made her feel" instead of "That was naughty.

And if there are any two moral stances that our times call for, they are precisely these, self-restraint and compassion.

One friend can make the difference - even when all others turn their backs (and even when that friendship is not all that solid).

The ability to control impulse is the base of will and character. By the same token, the root of altruism lies in empathy, the ability to read emotions in others; lacking a sense of another's need or despair, there is no caring. And if there are any two moral stances that our times call for, they are precisely these, self-restraint and compassion.

Not that leaders need to be overly "nice"; the emotional art of leadership includes pressing the reality of work demands without unduly upsetting people.

Empathy builds on self-awareness; the more open we are to our own emotions, the more skilled we will be in reading feelings.

The executive circuits that allow us to think about our own thoughts and to monitor the feelings that flow from them let us apply the same reasoning to other people´s minds when we choose to direct our attention that way

Empathy leads to caring, altruism, and compassion. Seeing things from another's perspective breaks down biased stereotypes, and so breeds tolerance and acceptance of differences. These capacities are ever more called on in our increasingly pluralistic society, allowing people to live together in mutual respect and creating the possibility of productive public discourse. These are basic arts of democracy.

Some time is needed to grasp the psychological and moral dimensions of a situation. The more distracted we are, the less we can cultivate the subtler forms of empathy and compassion.

los psicópatas no se preocupen por las posibles consecuencias de sus actos. Y su incapacidad de experimentar el miedo es la que da cuenta de su ausencia de toda empatía –o compasión– hacia el dolor y el miedo de sus víctimas.

the root of altruism lies in empathy, the ability to read emotions in others; lacking a sense of another's need or despair, there is no caring.