Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.
- Pema Chodron
At the root of all the harm we cause is ignorance.
- Pema Chodron
The only reason we don't open our hearts and minds to other people
is that they trigger confusion in us
that we don't feel brave enough or sane enough to deal with.
To the degree that we look clearly and compassionately at ourselves,
we feel confident and fearless about looking into someone else's eyes.
- Pema Chodron
Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded.
It's a relationship between equals.
Only when we know our own darkness well
can we be present with the darkness of others.
Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.
- Pema Chodron
Abandon hope.
- Pema Chodron
To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake
is to be continually thrown out of the nest.
- Pema Chodron
You may call God love, you may call God goodness.
But the best name for God is compassion.
- Meister Eckhart
The purpose of human life is to serve,
and to show compassion and the will to help others.
- Albert Schweitzer
People will forget what you said,
people will forget what you did,
but people will never forget
how you made them feel.
- Maya Angelou
If we have no peace,
it is because we have forgotten
that we belong to each other.
- Mother Teresa
No man stands so tall as when he stoops to help a child.
- Anonymous (often attributed to Abraham Lincoln)
One can not reflect in streaming water.
Only those who know internal peace can give it to others.
- Lao Tzu
Give me your tired, your poor,
your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.
- written on the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor
Let your sympathies and your compassion
be always with the under dog in the fight -
this is magnanimity;
but bet on the other one - this is business.
- Mark Twain
People don't care how much you know
until they know how much they care.
- John C. Maxwell
One of the greatest diseases is to be nobody to anybody.
- Mother Teresa
We receive this food in gratitude to all beings
Who have helped to bring it to our table,
And vow to respond in turn to those in need
With wisdom and compassion.
- Buddhist Blessing
The unselfish effort to bring cheer to others
will be the beginning of a happier life for ourselves.
- Helen Keller
If you want others to be happy, practice compassion.
If you want to be happy, practice compassion.
- Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama
If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need
but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him?
- 1 John 3:17
Universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality.
- Arthur Schopenhauer
The vast Cathedral of Your Being
becomes sanctuary for all creation
as you celebrate the universal sacraments
of compassion and joy.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
With courage, you will dare to take risks,
have the strength to be compassionate,
and the wisdom to be humble.
Courage is the foundation of integrity.
- Keshavan Nair
I have always found that mercy bears
richer fruits than strict justice.
- Abraham Lincoln
Indifference and neglect often
do much more damage than outright dislike.
- J. K. Rowling
A generous heart, kind speech,
and a life of service and compassion
are the things which renew humanity.
- The Buddha
The most terrible poverty is loneliness
and the feeling of being unloved.
- Mother Teresa
We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men
who walked through the huts comforting others,
giving away their last piece of bread...
They offer sufficient proof that everything
can be taken from a man but one thing:
to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances,
to choose one's own way.
- Viktor E. Frankl
Our compassion and acts of selflessness
take us to the deeper truths.
- Amma
I teach one thing and one only:
that is, suffering and the end of suffering.
- The Buddha
A part of kindness consists in loving people more than they deserve.
- Joseph Joubert
One of the sanest, surest, and most generous joys of life
comes from being happy over the good fortune of others.
- Robert A. Heinlein
One of the secrets of life is that
all that is really worth the doing
is what we do for others.
- Lewis Carroll
What do we live for, if it is not
to make life less difficult for each other?
- George Eliot
I believe that every human mind feels pleasure
in doing good to another.
- Thomas Jefferson
If you wish to experience peace,
provide peace for another.
- Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama
I want you to be concerned about your next door neighbor.
Do you know your next door neighbor?
- Mother Teresa
Wherever a man turns he can find someone who needs him.
- Albert Schweitzer
When will our consciences grow so tender
that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?
- Eleanor Roosevelt
Great people are those who make others feel
that they, too, can become great.
- Mark Twain
To know even one life has
breathed easier because you have lived.
This is to have succeeded.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is hard to interest those who have everything,
in those who have nothing.
- Helen Keller
If there is anything that a man can do well,
I say let him do it. Give him a chance.
- Abraham Lincoln
Be kind whenever possible; and it is always possible.
- Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama
The worst sin toward our fellow creatures
is not to hate them,
but to be indifferent to them:
that's the essence of inhumanity.
- George Bernard Shaw
Life is an exciting business,
and most exciting when it is lived for others.
- Helen Keller
Nobody cares how much you know,
until they know how much you care.
- attributed to Theodore Roosevelt, among others,
but probably earlier and anonymous
We can never be the better for our religion
if our neighbor is the worse for it.
- Anonymous
We ourselves feel that what we are doing
is just a drop in the ocean.
But the ocean would be less
because of that missing drop.
- Mother Teresa
A man is truly ethical only when he obeys
the compulsion to help all life which he is able to assist,
and shrinks from injuring anything that lives.
- Albert Schweitzer
Where there is charity and wisdom,
there is neither fear nor ignorance.
- St. Francis of Assisi
No one can find inner peace except by working,
not in a self-centered way, but for the whole human family.
- Peace Pilgrim
For some of us, the world appears to provide
only a fixed quantity of each resource -
a limited amount of food, of money,
of love, of success, of appreciation.
For others, life is unlimited.
Their world expands with the generosity, compassion,
inventiveness, and service that they contribute.
In this world-view, money that is spent
or given away returns multiplied.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Be gentle first with yourself.
- Lama Yeshe
When we do the best that we can,
we never know what miracle is wrought in our life,
or in the life of another.
- Helen Keller
It is a kingly act to assist the fallen.
- Mother Teresa
When I am getting ready to reason with a man,
I spend one-third of my time thinking about myself
and what I am going to say
and two-thirds about him and what he is going to say.
- Abraham Lincoln
Whatever you say, say with kindness.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Whoever is happy will make others happy too.
- Anne Frank
If in our daily life we can smile,
if we can be peaceful and happy,
not only we, but everyone will profit from it.
This is the most basic kind of peace work.
- Thich Nhat Hanh
We shall show mercy, but we shall not ask for it.
- Winston Churchill
We cause ourselves untold misery whenever we believe
others to be imperfect and try to change them.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
The quality of mercy is not strained.
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
- William Shakespeare
Kindness is better than piety.
- Yiddish Proverb
Give to your relatives, and to the needy, and to travelers.
Do not squander your wealth in wantonness.
- Quran 17:26
No one has ever become poor by giving.
- Anne Frank
We cannot despair of humanity,
since we ourselves are human beings.
- Albert Einstein
Recall a recent time when someone was strongly critical
of your opinions (perhaps your political or religious beliefs).
Now, put yourself in their shoes - with compassion.
Try to understand and appreciate their point-of-view -
not to change your own opinions,
but to celebrate all our human differences - in peace.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
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.
- Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama
I have found that among its other benefits,
giving liberates the soul of the giver.
- Maya Angelou
The smallest act of kindness
is worth more than the grandest intention.
- Oscar Wilde
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May the world be kind to you,
and may your own thoughts be gentle upon yourself.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
All materials & writings are copyright © Jonathan Lockwood Huie, except for quotes and other specifically identified material which belong to their respective copyright holders if applicable.