Selected compassion quotes

1. Love has a hem to her garment that reaches to the very dust. It sweeps the stains from the streets and lanes, and because it can, it must.

2. It is the enemy who can truly teach us to practice the virtues of compassion and tolerance.

3. If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.

4. We need a little more compassion, and if we cannot have it then no politician or even a magician can save the planet.

5. Compassion and tolerance are not a sign of weakness, but a sign of strength.

6. Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive.

7. All major religious traditions carry basically the same message, that is love, compassion and forgiveness ... the important thing is they should be part of our daily lives.

8. Whether one believes in a religion or not, and whether one believes in rebirth or not, there isn't anyone who doesn't appreciate kindness and compassion.

9. It is necessary to help others, not only in our prayers, but in our daily lives. If we find we cannot help others, the least we can do is to desist from harming them.

10. Maybe the Dalai Lama is the only person who is totally honest, and even with him, he's skillful not to hurt anybody. He's skillful.

11. I see God in every human being. When I wash the leper's wounds, I feel I am nursing the Lord himself. Is it not a beautiful experience?

12. The dying, the cripple, the mental, the unwanted, the unloved they are Jesus in disguise.

13. I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.

14. I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.

15. Harden our hearts to the innocents in the womb, and we have hardened our hearts to the need for compassion, and mercy, and fellow-feeling, and charity, and decency in this world.

16. I can do no other than be reverent before everything that is called life. I can do no other than to have compassion for all that is called life. That is the beginning and the foundation of all ethics.

17. The purpose of human life is to serve, and to show compassion and the will to help others.

18. This new form of activity medicine I could not represent to myself as talking about the religion of love, but only as an actual putting it into practice.

19. Whoever is spared personal pain must feel himself called to help in diminishing the pain of others. We must all carry our share of the misery which lies upon the world.

20. Animals, they are one of the most beautiful gifts we have and, you know, if there are people that have compassion, there are very few people that put their money into animal rescue organizations. And if there is someone that has that passion, animals need all the help they can get.

21. This is the way addled liberals really think. Even as they champion sucking the brains out of little babies, they think of themselves as indelibly compassionate because they favor an overweening, behemoth federal government.

22. Before my eyes are many miserable scenes, the suffering of others and myself forces my hands to move. I become a machine for writing.

23. It is terrible to destroy a person's picture of himself in the interests of truth or some other abstraction.

24. When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?

25. No radiant pearl which crested Fortune wears, No gem that twinkling hangs from Beauty's ears, Not the bright stars which Night's blue arch adorn, Nor rising suns that gild the vernal morn, Shine with such lustre as the tear that flows Down Virtue's manly cheek for others' woes.

26. Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind by being kind.

27. True charity occurs only when there are no notions of giving, giver, or gift.

28. It is fatal to look hungry. It makes people want to kick you.

29. I say that we are wound With mercy round and round As if with air.

30. First of all, do any of you here think it's a crime to help a suffering human end his agony? Any of you think it is? Say so right now. Well, then, what are we doing here?

31. The poor folk gladly came to me, for I did them no unkindness, but helped them as much as I could.

32. Look homeward, Angel, now, and melt with ruth.

33. In charity to all mankind, bearing no malice or ill will to any human being, and even compassionating those who hold in bondage their fellow men, not knowing what they do.

34. I have pondered long, and I know now that only the pure of heart forgive the thirst that leads to dead waters. And only the sure of foot can give a hand to him who stumbles.

35. To get rid of an enemy one must love him.

36. I'm sorry. I can love you. I can grieve for you, or with you. I can share your pain. But I cannot judge you.

37. I am a Hindu because it is Hinduism which makes the world worth living. I am a Hindu hence I Love not only human beings, but all living beings.

38. To love God in the most practical way is to love our fellow beings. If we feel for others in the same way as we feel for our own dear ones, we love God.

39. For there is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one's own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels with someone, for someone, a pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echoes.

40. Love has a hem to her garment that reaches to the very dust. It sweeps the stains from the streets and lanes, and because it can, it must.

41. One has only seen little of life, if one hasn't also seen the hand that mercifully - kills.

42. My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over. Our Constitution works; our great Republic is a government of laws and not of men. Here the people rule. But there is a higher Power, by whatever name we honor Him, who ordains not only righteousness but love, not only justice but mercy. As we bind up the internal wounds of Watergate, more painful and more poisonous than those of foreign wars, let us restore the golden rule to our political process, and let brotherly love purge our hearts of suspicion and of hate.

43. When you visualized a man or woman carefully, you could always begin to feel pity- that was a quality God's image carried with it.

44. It's really, really sad. I hope his family is okay. I wish them the best.

45. He who will establish himself on a certain height must yield according to circumstances, like the weather-cock on a church-spire, which, though it be made of iron, would soon be broken by the storm-wind if it remained obstinately immovable, and did not understand the noble art of turning to every wind. But a great man will never so far contradict his own feelings as to see, or, it may be, increase, with cold-blooded indifference, the misfortunes of his fellow country-men.

46. To pity distress is but human; to relieve it is Godlike.

47. Much that we call evil is really good in disguises; and we should not quarrel rashly with adversities not yet understood, nor overlook the mercies often bound up in them.

48. I don't care where an actor acts. It can be in summer stock, it can be over a radio, it can be over television, it can be in a goddam Broadway theatre, complete with the most fashionable, most well-fed, most sunburned-looking audience you can imagine. But I'll tell you a terrible secret - Are you listening to me? There isn't anyone out there who isn't Seymour's Fat Lady. That includes your Professor Tupper, buddy. And all his goddam cousins by the dozens. There isn't anyone anywhere that isn't Seymour's Fat Lady. Don't you know that? Don't you know that goddam secret yet? And don't you know - listen to me, now - don't you know who that Fat Lady really is? . . . Ah, buddy. Ah, buddy. It's Christ Himself. Christ Himself, buddy.

49. He wanted to tell me that he thought he finally knew why Christ said to call no man Fool. Christ had said it, Seymour thought I'd want to know, because there are no fools. Dopes, yes - fools, no.

50. Are you a man? Then you should have an human heart. But have you indeed? What is your heart made of? Is there no such principle as Compassion there? Do you never feel another's pain? Have you no Sympathy? No sense of human woe? No pity for the miserable? When you saw the flowing eyes, the heaving breasts, or the bleeding sides and tortured limbs of your fellow-creatures, was you a stone, or a brute? Did you look upon them with the eyes of a tiger? When you squeezed the agonizing creatures down in the ship, or when you threw their poor mangled remains into the sea, had you no relenting? Did not one tear drop from your eye, one sigh escape from your breast? Do you feel no relenting now? If you do not, you must go on, till the measure of your iniquities is full. Then will the Great GOD deal with You, as you have dealt with them, and require all their blood at your hands.

51. It was devastating. I can't imagine the depth of pain that his family and close friends felt. It was rough for me, but for them it must have been unbearable. (2004)

52. Politics and strategy are one. Nations should live in an atmosphere of self-criticism because it is healthy, but always with one heart and one mind. Stoop to the unhappy, and lift them up in your arms! Thaw out frozen America with the fire of your hearts! Make the natural blood of the nations? course vigorously through their veins! The new American are on their feet, saluting each other from nation to nation, the eyes of the laborers shining with joy. The natural statesman arises, schooled in the direct study of Nature. He reads to apply his knowledge, not to imitate.

53. Once I reveled in a destiny like no other joy I'd known: when the warden - reading my death sentence - wept.

54. It is the duty of man to raise up man. One is guilty of all abjection that one does not help to relieve. Only those who spread treachery, fire, and death out of hatred for the prosperity of others are undeserving of pity.

55. The world laughs at another man's pain.

56. Go poor Devil, get thee gone, why should I hurt thee? - This world surely is wide enough to hold both thee and me.

57. One does not ask of one who suffers: What is your country and what is your religion? One merely says: You suffer, that is enough for me...

58. A good head and a good heart are always a formidable combination.

59. Anywhere I see suffering, that is where I want to be, doing what I can.

60. HIV does not make someone dangerous to know, so you can shake their hands and give them a hug; heaven knows they need it.

61. How we behave toward cats here below determines our status in heaven.

62. The superior man is the providence of the inferior. He is eyes for the blind, strength for the weak, and a shield for the defenseless. He stands erect by bending above the fallen. He rises by lifting others.

63. Do not, I pray you, pluck from the heart the sweet flower of pity and trample it in the bloody dust of superstition.

64. I tell you God cannot afford to damn a man in the next world who has made a happy family in this. God cannot afford to cast over the battlements of heaven the man who has a happy home upon this earth. God cannot afford to be unpitying to a human heart capable of pity. God cannot clothe with fire the man who has clothed the naked here; and God cannot send to eternal pain a man who has done something toward improving the condition of his fellow-men.

65. When your child commits a wrong, take it in your arms; let it feel your heart beat against its heart; let the child know that you really and truly and sincerely love it.

66. A feeling heart is a blessing that no one, who has it, would be without; and it is a moral security of innocence; since the heart that is able to partake of the distress of another, cannot wilfully give it.

67. One's life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, indignation and compassion.

68. Wars begin in the minds of men, and in those minds, love and compassion would have built the defenses of peace.

69. Jesus a pleure, Voltaire a souri; c'est de cette larme divine et de ce sourire humain qu'est faite la douceur de la civilisation actuelle.

70. En somme, je fais ce que je peux, je souffre de la souffrance universelle, et je tache de la soulager, je n'ai que les chetives forces d'un homme, et je crie a tous: aidez-moi.

71. Mozart combines serenity, melancholy, and tragic intensity into one great lyric improvisation. Over it all hovers the greater spirit that is Mozart's - the spirit of compassion, of universal love, even of suffering - a spirit that knows no age, that belongs to all ages.

72. Peter Jennings was a gentleman. Even when asking the tough, insightful questions, he did so in a gentlemanly fashion. He was able to find the weakness in an argument and point it out, but in a constructive way, not in a 'gotcha' way... On Sept. 11, Peter's journalistic ability, coupled with his humanity, informed and helped comfort us. Like all those watching that day, he too was in pain over the destruction wreaked on his beloved city, but he soldiered on and did so with compassion and eloquence. While that clear, calm voice is silent now, the memory of his articulate and thoughtful presence will live on in our hearts forever. ~ Rudy Giuliani, former Mayor of New York City