Compassion Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

Dead, your Majesty. Dead, my lords and gentlemen. Dead, Right Reverends and Wrong Reverends of every order. Dead, men and women, born with Heavenly compassion in your hearts. And dying thus around us every day.

Charles Dickens

Children learn about the nature of the world from their family. They learn about power and about justice, about peace and about compassion within the family. Whether we oppress or liberate our children in our relationships with them will determine whether they grow up to oppress and be oppressed or to liberate and be liberated.

If you develop a pure and sincere motivation, if you are motivated by a wish to help on the basis of kindness, compassion, and respect, then you can carry on any kind of work, in any field, and function more effectively.

Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama

Strange indeed is human nature. Here were these men, to whom murder was familiar, who again and again had struck down the father of the family, some man against whom they had no personal feeling, without one thought of compunction or of compassion for his weeping wife or helpless children, and yet the tender or pathetic in music could move them to tears.

Arthur Conan Doyle

I — my heart — a gaping heart, enthroned in a radiance of blood. It is mine, it is ours. The heart — that wound which we have. I have compassion on myself.

People are able to live with only half a heart, to live without real compassion, because they are able to use words that are only forms.

Ordinarily, I am the person who falls in love quickly and somewhat inappropriately and then goes on to destroy what is a good thing. That's always been my style. So, you know: I get it. And I feel right now the way I imagine all those guys felt with me. And I have to say, for the first time in my life, I feel something approaching compassion for them.

Sarah Dunn (author)

And on the last day, the bad days become so difficult to recall, because one way or another, she had made a life here, just as I had. The town was paper, but the memories were not. All the things I'd done here, all the love and pity and compassion and violence and spite, kept welling up inside me.

A religious man is a person who holds God and man in one thought at one time, at all times, who suffers harm done to others, whose greatest passion is compassion, whose greatest strength is love and defiance of despair.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Because of his compassion Owen was always in trouble with his partners. They would have much preferred a tough, down-to-earth manager who would get a days work out of the little bastards.

John Kenneth Galbraith

God uses change to change us. He doesn't use it to destroy us or to distract us, but to coax us to the next level of character, experience, compassion and destiny!

Innocence involves an unseeing acceptance of things at face value, an ignorance of the area below the surface.... one cannot have both compassion and innocence.

Eugenia Collier

I understand the most profound and simplest Truth of all: Any time any of us reaches out, any time we pour even a drop of love, compassion, simple human decency (no matter how small; how seemingly insignificant) into the sea of earthly existence — we are, each and every one of us — the being called Mercy.

J. M. DeMatteis

I was supremely happy, for I had seen. Nothing could ever be the same. I have drunk at the clear and pure waters and my thirst was appeased....I have seen the Light. I have touched compassion which heals all sorrow and suffering; it is not for myself, but for the world....Love in all its glory has intoxicated my heart; my heart can never be closed. I have drunk at the fountain of Joy and eternal Beauty. I am God-intoxicated.

Jiddu Krishnamurti

In democratic ages men rarely sacrifice themselves for another, but they show a general compassion for all the human race. One never sees them inflict pointless suffering, and they are glad to relieve the sorrows of others when they can do so without much trouble to themselves. They are not disinterested, but they are gentle.

Alexis de Tocqueville

God is committed to developing a people who will reflect his character in this world, and his character always expresses concern and compassion for the afflicted.

Our enemy really isn't capitalism, it's cynicism. That's one the things I learned from Woody (Guthrie)... Not to be cynical... That cynicism... It destroys you, it rots you away from the inside. So that sense of optimism and humanity... which 20 years ago I would have called socialism but now I'll call compassion... You know, that idea is still out there and alive and if you can plug into that and encourage that it makes it all worth while.

The beauty and mystery of this world only emerges through affection, attention, interest and compassion... open your eyes wide and actually see this world by attending to its colors, details and irony.

Many people are unhappy and are not experiencing life to its fullest because they've closed their hearts to compassion, they are motivated by only what they want and what they think they need. They rarely do anything for anybody else unless they have an ulterior goal in mind. They are self-involved and self-centered.

The lesson I was learning involved the idea that I could feel compassion for people without acting on it.

But let us not forget that human love and compassion are equally deeply rooted in our primate heritage, and in this sphere too our sensibilities are of a higher order of magnitude than those of chimpanzees.

What is it that is done to our children that their puberty should deform them? They have the joy of movement; they have an enterprising curiosity; they are ready for sensible self-denial; they dream ahead, and they have a faithful memory, and, above all, great compassion. [...] The well-meaning educator who flatters and humours the young not only does a disservice to the community, but also damages the individual by depriving him of the opportunities of self-discovery.

If we live in our oneness-heart, we will feel the essence of all religions which is the love of God. Forgiveness, compassion, tolerance, brotherhood and the feeling of oneness are the signs of a true religion.

It is these undeniable qualities of human love and compassion and self-sacrifice that give me hope for the future. We are, indeed, often cruel and evil. Nobody can deny this. We gang up on each one another, we torture each other, with words as well as deeds, we fight, we kill. But we are also capable of the most noble, generous, and heroic behavior.

The essence of motherhood is not restricted to women who have given birth; it is a principle inherent in both women and men. It is an attitude of the mind. It is love — and that love is the very breath of life. No one would say, 'I will breathe only when I am with my family and friends; I won't breathe in front of my enemies.' Similarly, for those in whom motherhood has awakened, love and compassion towards everyone is as much part of their being as breathing.

Mata Amritanandamayi