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
At the root of all the harm we cause is ignorance.
- Pema Chodron
Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.
- Pema Chodron
To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake
is to be continually thrown out of the nest.
- 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
You may call God love, you may call God goodness.
But the best name for God is compassion.
- Meister Eckhart
People will forget what you said,
people will forget what you did,
but people will never forget
how you made them feel.
- Maya Angelou
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
The purpose of human life is to serve,
and to show compassion and the will to help others.
- Albert Schweitzer
If we have no peace,
it is because we have forgotten
that we belong to each other.
- Mother Teresa
Give me your tired, your poor,
your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.
- written on the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor
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
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
I have always found that mercy bears
richer fruits than strict justice.
- Abraham Lincoln
The most terrible poverty is loneliness
and the feeling of being unloved.
- Mother Teresa
A generous heart, kind speech,
and a life of service and compassion
are the things which renew humanity.
- The Buddha
The vast Cathedral of Your Being
becomes sanctuary for all creation
as you celebrate the universal sacraments
of compassion and joy.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
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
If you want others to be happy, practice compassion.
If you want to be happy, practice compassion.
- Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama
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
Universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality.
- Arthur Schopenhauer
Our compassion and acts of selflessness
take us to the deeper truths.
- Amma
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
Indifference and neglect often
do much more damage than outright dislike.
- J. K. Rowling
The unselfish effort to bring cheer to others
will be the beginning of a happier life for ourselves.
- Helen Keller
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
You can give without loving,
but you can never love without giving.
- Robert Louis Stevenson
We cannot despair of humanity,
since we ourselves are human beings.
- Albert Einstein
Where there is charity and wisdom,
there is neither fear nor ignorance.
- St. Francis of Assisi
We can live without religion and meditation,
but we cannot survive without human affection.
- Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama
If you wish to experience peace,
provide peace for another.
- Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama
The happiness of one's own heart alone
cannot satisfy the soul;
one must try to include,
as necessary to one's own happiness,
the happiness of others.
- Paramahansa Yogananda
You cannot do a kindness too soon,
for you never know how soon it will be too late.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
I have found that among its other benefits,
giving liberates the soul of the giver.
- Maya Angelou
No one has ever become poor by giving.
- Anne Frank
Nobody cares how much you know,
until they know how much you care.
- attributed to Theodore Roosevelt, among others,
but probably earlier and anonymous
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
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
It is a kingly act to assist the fallen.
- Mother Teresa
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
Your worst enemy cannot harm you as much as
your own unguarded thoughts.
- The Buddha
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
The more we care for the happiness of others,
the greater is our own sense of well-being.
- Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama
Whoever is happy will make others happy too.
- Anne Frank
The smallest act of kindness
is worth more than the grandest intention.
- Oscar Wilde
Deal with the faults of others as gently as with your own.
- Chinese proverb
Through violence, you may 'solve' one problem,
but you sow the seeds for another.
- Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama
We shall never know all the good that a simple smile can do.
- Mother Teresa
Wherever there is a human being,
there is an opportunity for a kindness.
- Seneca
When will our consciences grow so tender
that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?
- Eleanor Roosevelt
Be gentle first with yourself -
if you wish to be gentle with others.
- Lama Yeshe
We really have to understand the person we want to love.
If our love is only a will to possess, it is not love.
- Thich Nhat Hanh
Great people are those who make others feel
that they, too, can become great.
- Mark Twain
Nurturing is not complex.
It's simply being tuned in to the thing or person before you
and offering small gestures toward what it needs at that time.
- Mary Anne Radmacher
Kind words can be short and easy to speak,
but their echoes are truly endless.
- Mother Teresa
Love is the absence of judgment.
- Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama
Our prime purpose in this life is to help others.
And if you can't help them, at least don't hurt them.
- Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama
Whatever you say, say with kindness.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
The greatness of a nation can be judged
by the way its animals are treated.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi
The value of a man should be seen in what he gives
and not in what he is able to receive.
- Albert Einstein
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
We are formed and molded by our thoughts.
Those whose minds are shaped by selfless thoughts
give joy when they speak or act.
Joy follows them like a shadow that never leaves them.
- The Buddha
I soothe my conscience now with the thought that
it is better for hard words to be on paper
than that Mummy should carry them in her heart.
- Anne Frank
I Receive ALL of Life with Thanksgiving -
I have gratitude for EVERYTHING
that has ever occurred to bring me to this moment.
I give thanks for the joys and the sufferings,
the moments of peace and the flashes of anger,
the compassion and the indifference,
the roar of my courage and the cold sweat of my fear.
I accept gratefully the entirety of my past and my present life.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Give to your relatives, and to the needy, and to travelers.
Do not squander your wealth in wantonness.
- Quran 17:26
We may have found a cure for most evils;
but we have found no remedy for the worst of them all,
the apathy of human beings.
- Helen Keller
Kindness is better than piety.
- Yiddish Proverb
Be gentle first with yourself.
- Lama Yeshe
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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.