Source: Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential
“O, ah! The awareness of emptiness brings forth a heart of compassion!”
“If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete.”
Source: Buddha's Little Instruction Book
Concepts
Freedom from Fear (1991)
Context: The wellspring of courage and endurance in the face of unbridled power is generally a firm belief in the sanctity of ethical principles combined with a historical sense that despite all setbacks the condition of man is set on an ultimate course for both spiritual and material advancement. It is his capacity for self-improvement and self-redemption which most distinguishes man from the mere brute. At the root of human responsibility is the concept of perfection, the urge to achieve it, the intelligence to find a path towards it, and the will to follow that path if not to the end at least the distance needed to rise above individual limitations and environmental impediments. It is man's vision of a world fit for rational, civilized humanity which leads him to dare and to suffer to build societies free from want and fear. Concepts such as truth, justice and compassion cannot be dismissed as trite when these are often the only bulwarks which stand against ruthless power.
Ten best quotes: HH Sheikh Mohammed, http://www.arabianbusiness.com/photos/ten-best-quotes-hh-sheikh-mohammed-503777.html?img=0, Arabian Business.
Speech at the American Enterprise Institute http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/05/21/cheney_obama_keeping_america_safe_96615.html (21 May, 2009)
2000s, 2009
Quoted by Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, at Colorado Outward Bound's 25th anniversary in 1987; as cited in Leadership the Outward Bound Way (2007), ISBN 159485033X.
Source: God Has a Dream: A Vision of Hope for Our Time
Page 28
Post-Presidency, Our Endangered Values (2005)
Source: Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis
Source: The Hundred Verses of Advice: Tibetan Buddhist Teachings on What Matters Most
“True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar.”
1960s, Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam (1967)
Context: A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be changed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth with righteous indignation. It will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say, "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war, "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.
Madison's notes (11 July 1787) http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/debates_711.asp<!-- Reports of Debates in the Federal Convention (11 July 1787), in The Papers of James Madison (1842), Vol. II, p. 1073 -->
Variants:
1780s, The Debates in the Federal Convention (1787)
Context: Two objections had been raised against leaving the adjustment of the representation, from time to time, to the discretion of the Legislature. The first was, they would be unwilling to revise it at all. The second, that, by referring to wealth, they would be bound by a rule which, if willing, they would be unable to execute. The first objection distrusts their fidelity. But if their duty, their honor, and their oaths, will not bind them, let us not put into their hands our liberty, and all our other great interests; let us have no government at all. In the second place, if these ties will bind them we need not distrust the practicability of the rule. It was followed in part by the Committee in the apportionment of Representatives yesterday reported to the House. The best course that could be taken would be to leave the interests of the people to the representatives of the people.
Mr. Madison was not a little surprised to hear this implicit confidence urged by a member who, on all occasions, had inculcated so strongly the political depravity of men, and the necessity of checking one vice and interest by opposing to them another vice and interest. If the representatives of the people would be bound by the ties he had mentioned, what need was there of a Senate? What of a revisionary power? But his reasoning was not only inconsistent with his former reasoning, but with itself. At the same time that he recommended this implicit confidence to the Southern States in the Northern majority, he was still more zealous in exhorting all to a jealousy of a western majority. To reconcile the gentleman with himself, it must be imagined that he determined the human character by the points of the compass. The truth was, that all men having power ought to be distrusted, to a certain degree. The case of Pennsylvania had been mentioned, where it was admitted that those who were possessed of the power in the original settlement never admitted the new settlements to a due share of it. England was a still more striking example.
“Desire sets our compass, but real life steers our course.”
The First Phone Call from Heaven
“We have to make mistakes, it's how we learn compassion for others.”
Source: American Wife
Source: Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life
“Whatever God does, the first outburst is always compassion.”
Source: The Power of Vulnerability: Teachings of Authenticity, Connections and Courage
“True beauty is about who you are as a human being, your principles, your moral compass.”
Source: Seriously... I'm Kidding
The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984), Part One: Lightness and Weight
Variant: For there is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one's own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels with someone, for someone, a pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echoes.
Source: Identity
Source: The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
Source: Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life
We Had Him (2009)
Source: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Context: Though we are many, each of us is achingly alone, piercingly alone.
Only when we confess our confusion can we remember that he was a gift to us and we did have him.
He came to us from the creator, trailing creativity in abundance.
Despite the anguish, his life was sheathed in mother love, family love, and survived and did more than that.
He thrived with passion and compassion, humor and style. We had him whether we know who he was or did not know, he was ours and we were his.
Source: Waiting and Dating
“Those who are without compassion cannot see what is seen with the eyes of compassion.”
Source: The Miracle of Mindfulness: An Introduction to the Practice of Meditation
“Compassion is not weakness, and concern for the unfortunate is not socialism.”
“For all the compasses in the world, there's only one direction, and time is its only measure.”
Source: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
Source: I Never Promised You a Rose Garden
Source: Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life
“When it comes to love, compassion, and other feelings of the heart, I am rich.”
Source: The Soul of a Butterfly: Reflections on Life's Journey
“Compassion directed toward oneself is true humility.”
Source: Cry, the Beloved Country
“put the car in "d" set the compass to "n" and get the "f"out of there”
Source: How to Survive a Horror Movie
Variant: You are my courage, as I am your conscience," he whispered. "You are my heart---and I your compassion. We are neither of us whole, alone. Do ye not know that, Sassenach?
Source: Drums of Autumn
Source: A Thousand Splendid Suns
Source: Why Are You Atheists So Angry? 99 Things That Piss Off the Godless
Source: The House of Mirth
“What would I do without the moral compass of a teenage werewolf?”
Source: Magic Burns
Source: The Son of Neptune
Source: I Thought It Was Just Me: Women Reclaiming Power and Courage in a Culture of Shame
Source: Beyond Codependency: And Getting Better All the Time
“We cannot ignore our pain and feel compassion for it at the same time.”
Source: The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are
Source: The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists
“But compassion isn't about solutions. It's about giving all the love that you've got.”
Source: Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar
“She bludgeoned me with a look of such limitless compassion that I immediately began to cry.”
Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You
As quoted in Successful Aging : A Conference Report (1974) by Eric Pfeiffer, p. 142
Attributed
“The measure of civilized behavior is compassion.”
Source: Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Cape Town
