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Compassion Quotes and Sayings that Inspire

Compassion Quotes

Reading compassion quotes and thinking about them, can awaken pity, love, and the desire to help.

We can define the word compassion, as the feeling that arises when we are confronted with another’s suffering and feel motivated to relieve that suffering.

It is kindness, love and being aware and considerate of the needs of other people.

Compassion, to a certain extent, is similar to empathy or altruism, but it is more. A compassionate person desires to help people, not just sympathize with them.

Dictionary.com defines compassion as follows:
“Feeling of deep sympathy and sorrow for another who is stricken by misfortune, accompanied by a strong desire to alleviate the suffering.”

Cambridge dictionary defines compassion as:
“A strong feeling of sympathy and sadness for the suffering or bad luck of others and a wish to help them.”

Here is our collection of inspiring compassion quotes and sayings.

Inspiring Compassion Quotes

“If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.” –The Dalai Lama

“It is in deep solitude that I find the gentleness with which I can truly love my brothers.” –Thomas Merton

“Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.” –Franklin D. Roosevelt

“Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive.”Dalai Lama

“If there is any kindness I can show, or any good thing I can do to any fellow being, let me do it now, and not deter or neglect it, as I shall not pass this way again.” –William Penn

“I would rather make mistakes in kindness and compassion than work miracles in unkindness and hardness.” –Mother Teresa

“True benevolence, or compassion, extends itself through the whole of existence and sympathizes with the distress of every creature capable of sensation.” –Joseph Addison

“Don’t always talk. Find the time to listen to people. Listening makes you wiser and more helpful.” –Remez Sasson

“Words have the power to both destroy and heal. When words are both true and kind, they can change our world.” –Buddha

“Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson

“With malice towards none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right.” –Abraham Lincoln

Motivating Compassion Quotes

“Love truth, and pardon error.” –Voltaire

Have compassion for nature and its beauty, for animals and for people for the sky and the earth. –Remez Sasson

“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle.” –Plato

“I have just three things to teach: simplicity, patience, compassion. These three are your greatest treasures.”Lao Tzu

“We need more kindness, more compassion, more joy, more laughter. I definitely want to contribute to that.”Ellen DeGeneres

“Compassion automatically invites you to relate with people because you no longer regard people as a drain on your energy.”Chogyam Trungpa

“If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.” –Mother Teresa

“The whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness of the interdependence of all these living beings, which are all part of one another, and all involved in one another.” –Thomas Merton

“More helpful than all wisdom is one draught of simple human pity that will not forsake us.” –George Eliot

“Let your love embrace all living creatures, since they are part of the same life force residing in you and in others.”Remez Sasson

“Three things in human life are important. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind.” –Henry James

Empowering Quotes about Compassion

“Compassion is a foundation for sharing our aliveness and building a more humane world.” –Martin Lowenthal

“Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.” –Albert Einstein

“The purpose of human life is to serve, and to show compassion and the will to help others.” –Albert Schweitzer

“Let us fill our hearts with our own compassion – towards ourselves and towards all living beings.”Thich Nhat Hanh

“When you help others you help yourself, since all people are connected with the same life force.” –Remez Sasson

“There is a nobility in compassion, a beauty in empathy, a grace in forgiveness.” –John Connolly

“No matter who we are, no matter how successful, no matter what our situation, compassion is something we all need to receive and give.” –Catherine Pulsifer

“In compassion, when we feel with the other, we dethrone ourselves from the center of our world and we put another person there.” –Karen Armstrong

More Quotes about Compassion

“It is lack of love for ourselves that inhibits our compassion toward others. If we make friends with ourselves, then there is no obstacle to opening our hearts and minds to others.” –Dalai Lama

“Honesty is the quality I value most in a friend. Not bluntness, but honesty with compassion.” –Brooke Shields

“Compassion for others begins with kindness to ourselves.” –Pema Chodron

“When you have learned compassion for yourself, compassion for others is automatic.” –Henepola Gunaratana

“Let’s choose each day and every day to keep an attitude of faith and joy and belief and compassion.” –Charles Swindoll

“We are each made for goodness, love and compassion. Our lives are transformed as much as the world is when we live with these truths.” –Desmond Tutu

“It is sometimes difficult to view compassion and loving kindness as the strengths they are.” –Sharon Salzberg

“Compassion is not religious business, it is human business, it is not luxury, it is essential for our own peace and mental stability, it is essential for human survival.” –Dalai Lama

“Cultivating compassion for ourselves and others can bring balance and harmony to our lives in a way we never dreamed of.” –Thubten Chodron

“As teachers, we need to have compassion for our students, to look at where they’re coming from, and to intuit their particular strengths and limits.” –Tim Gunn

“All I ever wanted was to reach out and touch another human being not just with my hands but with my heart.” –Tahereh Mafi

“If you understand the difficulty and problems a person faces, you will tend to be compassionate and try to heal their wounds.” –Anthony Aries

“Spirituality is allowing compassion and love to flourish. When belongness begins, corruption ends.” –Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

Kindness Empathy and Compassion Quotes

“To love our enemy is impossible. The moment we understand our enemy, we feel compassion towards him/her, and he/she is no longer our enemy.” – Thich Nhat Hanh

“A kind gesture can reach a wound that only compassion can heal.” – Steve Maraboli

“Until he extends his circle of compassion to include all living things, man will not himself find peace.” – Albert Schweitzer

“I believe empathy is the most essential quality of civilization.” – Roger Ebert

“Resolve to be tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant with the weak and wrong. Sometime in your life, you will have been all of these.” – Gautama Buddha

“I think we all have empathy. We may not have enough courage to display it.” – Maya Angelou

“When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen.” – Ernest Hemingway

“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” – Simone Weil

“To be kind to others, to be considerate, and to listen are ways to show compassion.” – Remez Sasson

“Sympathy, understanding and being mindful of the true needs of others is compassion.” – Remez Sasson

Compassion Quotes

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