Quotes About Compassion

So what's the difference between people who are high in communion (positive) and those who are high in unmitigated communion (negative)? Both sorts of people care about others. But communion corresponds to what we can call concern and compassion, while unmitigated communion ends up relating more to empathy or, more precisely, empathic distress—suffering at the suffering of others.

This distinction between empathy and compassion is critical for the argument I've been making throughout this book.

Compassion is feeling for and not feeling with the other.

There is also a practical difference. When people were asked to empathize with those who were suffering, they found it unpleasant. Compassion training, in contrast, led to better feelings on the part of the meditator and kinder behavior toward others.

I told a story earlier from Jonathan Glover about a woman who lived close to a concentration camp and felt empathy for those being tortured. Her response was to ask that the torture be done elsewhere, where it wouldn't disturb her. This was one of a series of examples meant to show how empathy need not make us good.

Asking people to feel as much empathy for an enemy as for their own child is like asking them to feel as much hunger for a dog turd as for an apple—it's logically possible, but it doesn't reflect the normal functioning of the human mind.

My friend does get into her clients' heads, of course—she would be useless if she couldn't—but she doesn't feel what they feel. She employs understanding and caring, not empathy

When we engage with people from the Majority World church, many of whose lives are characterized by hardship and suffering, they ask us, not unlike Thomas asked of Jesus, "Show us your scars, and then we'll believe that you understand the same gospel that we've embraced.

A healthy body attends to the pain of the weakest part.

It may be considered folly by common opinion but this refusal to destroy life unnecessarily, this reverence for it, must become a deeply implanted part of his ethical standard.

Compassion is the highest moral value, the noblest human feeling, the purest creature-love. It is the extreme social expression of the divine soul of man. Because he is able to share his feelings, where both are in reality connected in harmony by the presence of this soul in each one. One consequence of this habit of compassion is that an immense understanding of human nature fills his entire being.

Princess Diana talking to Prince William about the loss of her title Her Royal Highness: She turned to William in her distress. She (Princess Diana) told me how he had sat with her one night when she was upset over the loss of HRH, put his arms around her and said: Don't worry, Mummy. I will give it back to you one day when I am king.

This is why Jesus Christ, as He went about His ministry for 3 years, meant as an example when He by seeing an adulterous woman said, "Even I do not condemn you. Even I cannot pass judgment on you. I must receive your judgment. I must die on the Cross in your place.

John Quincy Adams' depression was treated by his aunt with some reliable remedies, first sleep and then compassion. She said, " He was half cared for by having someone to care for him.

Were we to be engaged in a war . . we should become absolutely destitute of elephants. . .What would our children do without elephants to amuse them? What would the sick do without the sight of elephants to invigorate them?

Ni la búsqueda de justicia con ánimo vengativo por parte de los vencedores ni el olvido por decreto son actitudes deseables.

The Christian takes strength and comfort in the fact that God suffers with us and even enters into our suffering—particularly in the person of Jesus of Nazareth on the shameful, humiliating cross. Indeed, a God who doesn't suffer "would make God a demon." An indifferent God would condemn human beings to indifference as well.

Any conditioned cat-hater can be won over by any cat who chooses to make the effort.

Any conditioned cat-hater can be won over by any cat who chooses to make the effort. Only an unregenerate ailurophobe can't be reached. I'd say he's really sick.

what about the bullies?' 'They're the worst thing in the world. It's a big circle. They hurt people. The people they hurt feel powerless and go on to hurt other people when they're able to. And the original bullies were once hurt themselves. The wheel keeps on turning. Unless you step off.

Always try to be nice,' he hissed through the increasing pain. 'But never fail to be kind.

When you start thinking like Christ, you are guaranteed to sometimes make choices that offend and anger other people.

Immature people will not receive loving truth, no matter how gently you offer it.

Hurting people look toward individuals who, like Jesus, have both fire and compassion in their eyes, individuals who inspire and who will speak the truth in love—even if it stings.