Compassion Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

The essence of any religion is good heart. Sometimes I call love and compassion a universal religion. This is my religion.

Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama

The essence of compassion is a desire to alleviate the suffering of others and to promote their well-being

Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama

The real test of compassion is not what we say in abstract discussions but how we conduct ourselves in daily life.

Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama

True compassion is not just an emotional response, but a firm commitment founded on reason. Therefore, a truly compassionate attitude toward others does not change, even if they behave negatively. Through universal altruism, you develop a feeling of responsibility for others: the wish to help them actively overcome their problems.

Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama

The wretched have no compassion, they can do good only from strong principles of duty.

Compassion is the wish for another being to be free from suffering; love is wanting them to have happiness.

Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama

I am not interested in picking up crumbs of compassion thrown from the table of someone who considers himself my master. I want the full menu of rights.

I believe in human dignity as the source of national purpose, human liberty as the source of national action, the human heart as the source of national compassion, and in the human mind as the source of our invention and our ideas

John F. Kennedy

For a practitioner of love and compassion, an enemy is one of the most important teachers. Without an enemy you cannot practice tolerance, and without tolerance you cannot build a sound basis of compassion.

Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama

Only the development of compassion and understanding for others can bring us the tranquility and happiness we all seek.

Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama

For a person who cherishes compassion and love, the practice of tolerance is essential, and for that, and enemy is indispinsable. So we should be grateful to our enemies, for it is they who can best help us to develop a tranquil mind.

Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama

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

Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama

Sometimes, in difficult circumstances, one can confuse compassion with love.

Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Fear, O Achilles, the wrath of heaven; think on your own father and have compassion upon me, who am the more pitiable

Compassion can be put into practice if one recognizes the fact that every human being is a member of humanity and the human family regardless of differences in religion, culture, color and creed. Deep down there is no difference.

Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama

Almost without being aware of it, we end up being incapable of feeling compassion at the outcry of the poor, weeping for other people's pain, and feeling a need to help them, as though all this were someone else's responsibility and not our own.

If each of us can learn to relate to each other more out of compassion, with a sense of connection to each other and a deep recognition of our common humanity, and more important, to teach this to our children, I believe that this can go a long way in reducing many of the conflicts and problems that we see today.

Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama

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.

Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama

Foolish, selfish people are always thinking of themselves and the result is always negative. Wise persons think of others, helping them as much as they can, and the result is happiness. Love and compassion are beneficial both for you and others. Through your kindness to others, your mind and heart will open to peace.

Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama

But a compassion for that which is not and cannot be useful and lovely, is degrading and futile.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is his [the poet's, the writer's] privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.

William Faulkner

The realization that we are all basically the same human beings who seek happiness and try to avoid suffering is very helpful in developing a sense of brotherhood and sisterhood; a warm feeling of love and compassion for others.

Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama

The sweets of Pillage can be known
To no one but the Thief,
Compassion for Integrity
Is his divinest Grief.

Emily Dickinson

Compassion for animals is intimately associated with goodness of character, and it may be confidently asserted that he who is cruel to animals cannot be a good man.

Arthur Schopenhauer

The assumption that animals are without rights, and the illusion that our treatment of them has no moral significance, is a positively outrageous example of Western crudity and barbarity. Universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality.

Arthur Schopenhauer