quotations about compassion
Heaven seems to indicate the duty of even barren compassion, by inclining us to weep for evils which we cannot remedy.
SAMUEL JOHNSON
Life and Writings
Our hearts of stone become hearts of flesh when we learn where the outcast weeps.
BRENNAN MANNING
Abba's Child
Meditation is a flower and compassion is its fragrance. Exactly like that it happens. The flower blooms and the fragrance spreads on the winds in all directions, to be carried to the very ends of earth. But the basic thing is the blooming of the flower. Man is also carrying a potentiality for flowering within him. Until and unless the inner being of man flowers, the fragrance of compassion is not possible. Compassion cannot be practiced. It is not a discipline. You cannot manage it. It is beyond you. If you meditate, one day, suddenly, you become aware of a new phenomenon, absolutely strange--from your being, compassion is flowing towards the whole of existence. Undirected, unaddressed, it is moving to the very ends of existence.
OSHO
Compassion: The Ultimate Flowering of Love
Compassion is the chief law of human existence.
FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY
The Idiot
The ugliest thing I have ever seen is a human being without compassion.
ANONYMOUS
Compassion crowns the soul with its truest victory.
ABERJHANI
The River of Winged Dreams
Compassion is silent but does not remain secluded. It goes out at the sight of trouble, sin, and need.
E. M. BOUNDS
E. M. Bounds: Classic Collection on Prayer
The family is a school of compassion because it is here that we learn to live with other people.
KAREN ARMSTRONG
Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life
There's no prescription that's sold
That can heal you like compassion
TODD RUNDGREN
"Compassion"
A kind gesture can reach a wound that only compassion can heal.
STEVE MARABOLI
Life
Liberals measure compassion by how many people are given welfare. Conservatives measure compassion by how many people no longer need it.
RUSH LIMBAUGH
"35 Undeniable Truths of Life"
Most women bestow their favors upon men, not from Passion, but from Compassion.
ABRAHAM MILLER
Unmoral Maxims
Some people's compassion is worse than their indifference or even hatred.
E. P. DAY
attributed, Day's Collacon
There is no small kindness; every compassionate act makes large the world.
MARY ANNE RADMACHER
Live with Intention: Rediscovering What We Deeply Know
Compassion is like a passage. Everything passes through it. Nothing can stay there. Compassion is love expressed in all its fullness.
SRI MATA AMRITANANDAMAYI DEVI
Unity is Peace
Grief for the calamity of another is pity, and arises from the imagination that the like calamity may befall himself; and, therefore, it is called compassion, or in the phrase of the present time a fellow-feeling.
THOMAS HOBBES
Leviathan
Let our compassion express itself in efforts to bring the erring back to sacred principles, and if they persist, let us pity them the more for a blindness so fatal to themselves.
S. E. D. CHARNAGE
attributed, Day's Collacon
Compassion is a mixed passion, composed of love and sorrow.
NOAH WEBSTER
An American Dictionary
Compassion is not just feeling with someone, but seeking to change the situation. Frequently people think compassion and love are merely sentimental. No! They are very demanding. If you are goint to be compassionate, be prepared for action!
DESMOND TUTU
Psychology Today, Mar/Apr 2005
I know the compassion of others is a relief at first. I don't despise it. But it can't quench pain, it slips through your soul as through a sieve. And when our suffering has been dragged from one pity to another, as from one mouth to another, we can no longer respect or love it.
GEORGES BERNANOS
The Diary of a Country Priest