Compassion quotes
2.4K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside compassion — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"Success is the ability to meet worthy goals, but it's also the ability to love and have compassion and the ability to get in touch with your creative center, to transform yourself toward more peaceful and just pursuits. I hope we redefine success. Otherwise, we'll see more of what we're already seeing - more aggression, more burnout, more Wall Street scandals, more war, more terrorism, more eco-destruction."
"Sympathy for the lowest animals is one of the noblest virtues with which man is endowed."
"Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others. Don't be afraid to be thought arrogant or selfish."
"We can talk about courage and love and compassion until we sound like a greeting card store, but unless we're willing to have an honest conversation about what gets in the way of putting these into practice in our daily lives, we will never change. Never, ever."
"AN ARTISTIC DISCOVERY OCCURS EACH TIME AS A NEW AND UNIQUE IMAGE OF THE WORLD, A HIEROGLYPHIC OF ABSOLUTE TRUTH. IT APPEARS AS A REVELATION, AS A MOMENTARY, PASSIONATE WISH TO GRASP INTUITIVELY AND AT A STROKE ALL THE LAWS OF THIS WORLD-ITS BEAUTY AND UGLINESS, ITS COMPASSION AND CRUELTY, ITS INFINITY AND ITS LIMITATIONS."
"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."
"Mercy but murders, pardoning those that kill."
"This society is not 'user-friendly' for older people."
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"I realized a while back that I have an innate ability to be compassionate, and I saw that the strength of compassion is something that healers have and healers use.'"
"The capacity to give one's attention to a sufferer is a very rare and difficult thing; it is almost a miracle; it is a miracle. Nearly all those who think they have the capacity do not possess it."
"Weakness is something we don't like to admit we have. We hold it against people, until we experience it, and then we feel more compassion for it."
"Follow diligently the Way in your own heart, but make no display of it to the world."
"People turn their eyes and ears to him (the sage), and the sage cares for them like his own children."
"Knowing the bright, but clinging to the dark, you become a model to the world."
"The highest virtue seems as low as a valley."
"If you would take, you must first give."
"Only I am clumsy, like drifting on the waves of the sea, without direction."
"To develop understanding, you have to practice looking at all living things with the eyes of compassion."
"Meditation is to get insight, to get understanding and compassion, and when you have them, you are compelled to act."
