Quotes about compassion
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“Those who are in love with practice without knowledge are like the sailor who gets into a ship without rudder or compass and who never can be certain whether he is going. Practice must always be founded on sound theory, and to this Perspective is the guide and the gateway; and without this nothing can be done well in the matter of drawing.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), I Prolegomena and General Introduction to the Book on Painting

Love, Making love, Knowledge, Relation ships

“Now, more than any time in our history, we will be judged by our capacity for compassion. Our ability to come through this, won’t just be down to what government or businesses do, but by the individual acts of kindness that we show each other. The small business who does everything they can not to lay off their staff. The student who does a shop for their elderly neighbour. The retired nurse who volunteers to cover some shifts in their local hospital. When this is over, and it will be over, we want to look back on this moment and remember the many small acts of kindness done by us and to us. We want to look back on this time and remember how we thought first of others and acted with decency. We want to look back on this time and remember how, in the face of a generation-defining moment, we undertook a collective national effort - and we stood together. It’s on all of us.”

Rishi Sunak (1980) Chancellor of the Exchequer of the United Kingdom

Statement on the Coronavirus as Chancellor (20 March 2020) Instagram post @rishisunakmp https://www.instagram.com/p/B990ItXHhXW/ (21 March 2020) 2020

History, Business, Effort, Time

“I advise you to fear Allah alone, with no partner of associate. I advise you to treat the first Muhâjireen well and acknowledge their seniority. I advise you to treat the Ansār well, and show approval of those among them who do well, and forgive those among them who make mistakes. I advise you to treat the people of the outlying regions well, for they are a shield against the enemy and conduits of fay; do not take anything from them except that which is surplus to their needs. I advise you to treat the people of the desert well, for they are the original Arabs and the protectors of Islam. Take from the surplus of their wealth and give it to their poor. I advise you to treat ahl adh-dhīmmah well, to defend them against their enemies and not burden them with more than they can bear if they fulfill their duties towards the believers or pay the Jizyāh with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued. I advise you to fear Allah and fear His wrath, lest you do anything wrong. I advise you to fear Allah with regard to the people, but do not fear the people with regard to Allah. I advise you to treat the people justly, and to devote yourself to looking after them and protecting them against their enemies. Do not show any favour to the rich over the poor. That will be better for your spiritual well being and will help to reduce your burden of sin, and it will be better for your Hereafter, until you meet the One Who knows what is in your heart. I instruct you to be strict with regard to the commands of Allah, His sacred limits and disobedience with all people, both relatives and others. Do not show any mercy to anyone until you have settled the score with him according to his offence. Treat all people as equal, and do not worry about who is as fault or fear the blame of the blamers. Beware of showing favouritism among the believers with regard to the fay that Allah has put you in charge of, lest that lead to injustice. Keep away from that. You are in a position between this world and the Hereafter. If you conduct your affairs justly in this world and refrain from indulgence, that will earn you faith and divine pleasure. I advise you not to let yourself or anyone else do wrong to ahl al-dhimmah. I advise you sincerely to seek thereby the Countenance of Allah and the Hereafter. I have chosen advice for you that I would offer to myself or my son. If you do as I have advised you and follow my instructions, you will have gained a great deal. If you don not accept it or pay attention to it, and do not handle your affairs in the way that pleases Allah, that will be a shortcoming on your part and you will have failed to be sincere, because whims and desires are the same and the cause of sin is Iblīs, who calls man to everything that will lead to his doom. He misguided the generations who came before you and led them to Hell, what a terrible abode. What a bad deal it is for a man to take the enemy of Allah as his friend, who calls him to disobey Allah. Adhere to the truth, strive hard to reach it and admonish yourself. I urge you by Allah to show mercy to the Muslims, honour their elderly, show compassion to their young ones and respect the knowledgeable ones among them. Do not harm them or humiliate them, and do not keep the fay for yourself lest you anger them. Do not deprive them of their stipends when they become due, thus making them poor. Do not keep them away on campaigns for so long that they end up having no children. Do not allow wealth to circulate only among the rich. Do not close your door to the people or allow the strong to oppress the weak. This is my advice to you, as Allah is my witness, and I greet you with peace.”

Umar (585–644) Second Caliph of Rashidun Caliphate and a companion of Muhammad

Umar ibn al-Khattab, Vol. 2, p. 389-390, also quoted in At-Tabqaat ul-Kabir, Vol. 3, p. 339
Last Advise

Bad luck, Children, People, Pleasure

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

Laozi (-604) semi-legendary Chinese figure, attributed to the 6th century, regarded as the author of the Tao Te Ching and fou…

Patience

“The base of sincere friendship is mutual joy and compassion.”

Zafar Mirzo (1972)

Friendship, Joy, Sincerity

“Nature's laws deny inter-species compassion and declare it to be racial suicide.”

David Lane (white nationalist) (1938–2007) American white supremacist, convicted felon

Revolution by Number

Law, Nature, Suicide

“We must use our brains to overcome our brains. You are the solution to this crazy world we find ourselves in. Do everything you can to reach others. Teach. Elevate. Encourage critical thinking. But do it with kindness and understanding. People who believe crazy things are only guilty of being human. Remember this and show compassion.”

Guy P. Harrison (1963) American skeptic author

People, World, Understanding, Thinking

“Listen with ears of tolerance!
See through the eyes of compassion!
Speak with the language of love.”

Rumi (1207–1273) Iranian poet

https://twitter.com/wise_chimp/status/1488946174321205253?s=21

Love

“God seems to have disappeared from the horizon, and his word no longer seems a compass guiding our lives, our basic decisions, our human and social relationships.”

Pope Francis (1936) 266th Pope of the Catholic Church

2020s, 2022

God, Decision

“Feeling is your compass. If you can feel, you have no cause to seek an outside opinion about your direction in life.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

Life, Feeling

“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.”

James Madison (1751–1836) 4th president of the United States (1809 to 1817)

Madison's notes (11 July 1787) http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/debates_711.asp 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.

Men, Truth, Imagination

“Desire sets our compass, but real life steers our course.”

Mitch Albom (1958) American author

The First Phone Call from Heaven

Life

“Compassion constitutes a radical form of criticism, for it announces that the hurt is to be taken seriously, that the hurt is not to be accepted as normal and natural but is an abnormal and unacceptable condition for humanness.”

Walter Brueggemann (1933) American theologian

Nature, Hurt

“We have to make mistakes, it's how we learn compassion for others.”

Curtis Sittenfeld (1975) Novelist, short story writer

Source: American Wife

Learning

“Compassion is a verb.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

“You can't have pride without humility. Aggression without tolerance. Strength without compassion. Power without restraint.”

D.J. MacHale (1955) American television director and producer

“Waking up this morning, I smile. Twenty-four brand new hours are before me. I vow to live fully in each moment and to look at all beings with eyes of compassion.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Smile

“Their false compassion is called compassion and their false understanding is called understanding, for this is their most potent spell.”

Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) poet, mountaineer, occultist

Understanding, Falseness

“We will not just say, "I love him very much," but instead, "I will do something so that he will suffer less." The mind of compassion is truly present when it is effective in removing another person's suffering.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Source: Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life

Love, Suffering, Personality

“Whatever God does, the first outburst is always compassion.”

Meister Eckhart (1260–1328) German theologian

God

“Have a little compassion on my nerves. You tear them to pieces.”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Source: Pride and Prejudice

Tear

“No one reaches out to you for compassion or empathy so you can teach them how to behave better. They reach out to us because they believe in our capacity to know our darkness well enough to sit in the dark with them.”

Brené Brown (1965) US writer and professor

Source: The Power of Vulnerability: Teachings of Authenticity, Connections and Courage

“Compassion is the basis of morality.”

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German philosopher

“True beauty is about who you are as a human being, your principles, your moral compass.”

Ellen DeGeneres (1958) American stand-up comedian, television host, and actress

Source: Seriously... I'm Kidding

Beauty, Beauty

“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.”

Milan Kundera book Identity

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

Pain, Feeling, Imagination

“In all human sorrow nothing gives comfort but love and faith, and that in the sight of Christ's compassion for us no sorrow is trifling.”

Leo Tolstoy book Anna Karenina

Source: Anna Karenina

Love, Faith, Christ

“It is necessary to keep one's compass in one's eyes and not in the hand, for the hands execute, but the eye judges.”

Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564) Italian sculptor, painter, architect and poet

“The assumption that animals are without rights and the illusion that our treatment of them has no moral significance is a positively outrageous example of Western crudity and barbarity. Universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality.”

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German philosopher

Source: The Basis of Morality

Universe, Animals

“The ragamuffin gospel reveals that Jesus forgives sins, including the sins of the flesh; that He is comfortable with sinners who remember how to show compassion; but that He cannot and will not have a relationship with pretenders in the Spirit.”

Brennan Manning (1934–2013) writer, American Roman Catholic priest and United States Marine

Source: The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out

Forgiveness

“It's the pointless things that give your life meaning. Friendship, compassion, art, love. All of them pointless. But they're what keeps life from being meaningless.”

Tim Winton (1960) Australian writer

Love, Life, Friendship, Art

“Love is that condition in the human spirit so profound that it allows me to survive, and better than that, to thrive with passion, compassion, and style.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

Love, Passion

“I was myself the compass of that sea:
I was the world in which I walked, and what I saw
Or heard or felt came not but from myself;
And there I found myself more truly and more strange.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

World, Sea

“The strongest, toughest men all have compassion. They're not heartless and cold. You have to be man enough to have compassion - to care about people and about your children" (217) - John Singleton "Oh Man, I've Become My Father”

Denzel Washington (1954) actor, screenwriter, director, producer

Source: A Hand to Guide Me

Men, Children, People

“We shall be permitted to live on this planet only for as long as we treat all nature with compassion and intelligence.”

Aldous Huxley book Island

Source: Island

Intelligence, Nature

“Without suffering, there'd be no compassion.”

Nicholas Sparks book A Walk to Remember

Source: A Walk to Remember

Suffering

“It is through weakness and vulnerability that most of us learn empathy and compassion and discover our soul.”

Desmond Tutu (1931) South African churchman, politician, archbishop, Nobel Prize winner

Source: God Has a Dream: A Vision of Hope for Our Time

Soul, Learning

“If it is not tempered by compassion, and empathy, reason can lead men and women into a moral void. (95)”

Karen Armstrong (1944) author and comparative religion scholar from Great Britain

Source: Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life

Women, Men

“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.”

Maya Angelou book I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

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.

Passion

“A religious man is a person who holds God and man in one thought at one time, at all times, who suffers harm done to others, whose greatest passion is compassion, whose greatest strength is love and defiance of despair.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) Polish-American Conservative Judaism Rabbi

Love, God, Suffering, Passion

“A woman may be beautiful but have poor character. A man may be a business genius, making money left and right, but lack common courtesy, sensitivity, and compassion.”

Myles Munroe (1954–2014) Bahamian Evangelical Christian minister

Source: Waiting and Dating

Money, Beauty, Business

“I would like my life to be a statement of love and compassion--and where it isn't, that's where my work lies.”

Ram Dass (1931–2019) American contemporary spiritual teacher and the author of the 1971 book Be Here Now

Love, Life

“She had wild eyes, slightly insane. She also carried an overload of compassion that was real enough and which obviously cost her something.”

Charles Bukowski book Women

Source: Women

“Those who are without compassion cannot see what is seen with the eyes of compassion.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Source: The Miracle of Mindfulness: An Introduction to the Practice of Meditation

“Compassion is not weakness, and concern for the unfortunate is not socialism.”

Hubert H. Humphrey (1911–1978) Vice-President of the USA under Lyndon B. Johnson

“For all the compasses in the world, there's only one direction, and time is its only measure.”

Tom Stoppard book Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

Source: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

World, Time

“Measure the hate you feel now, and the shame. That quantity is your capacity also to love and to feel joy and to have compassion.”

Joanne Greenberg book I Never Promised You a Rose Garden

Source: I Never Promised You a Rose Garden

Love, Hate, Feeling, Joy

“[T]he family is a school of compassion because it is here that we learn to live with other people. (68)”

Karen Armstrong (1944) author and comparative religion scholar from Great Britain

Source: Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life

People, School, Family, Learning

“Let us be those creative dissenters who will call our beloved nation to a higher destiny. To a new plateau of compassion, to a more noble expression of humanness.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

“Like a compass needle that points north, a man's accusing finger always finds a woman. -Nana”

Khaled Hosseini book A Thousand Splendid Suns

A Thousand Splendid Suns (2007)

“When it comes to love, compassion, and other feelings of the heart, I am rich.”

Muhammad Ali book The Soul of a Butterfly

Source: The Soul of a Butterfly: Reflections on Life's Journey

Love, Feeling, Heart

“Compassion directed toward oneself is true humility.”

Simone Weil (1909–1943) French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist

“Normal: lacking in taste, compassion, understanding, kindness, and ordinary human decency.”

Frank Portman King Dork

Source: King Dork

Understanding

“Even the strongest and bravest must sometimes weep. It shows they have a great heart, one that can feel compassion for others.”

Brian Jacques Redwall

Source: Redwall

Feeling, Heart

“For pain must enter into its glorified life of memory before it can turn into compassion.”

George Eliot book Middlemarch

Source: Middlemarch

Life, Pain, Memory

“Compassion refers to the arising in the heart of the desire to relieve the suffering of all beings.”

Ram Dass (1931–2019) American contemporary spiritual teacher and the author of the 1971 book Be Here Now

Suffering, Heart

“What he's really saying is: Please be a human being. With a life so full of rules and regiments, it's so easy to forget that's what they are. She knows—she sees—how often compassion takes a back seat to expediency.”

Neal Shusterman book Unwind

Source: Unwind

Life, Forgetting

“because life slips away, and because I need for the rest of my journey a star that will not play false to me, a compass that will not lie.”

Alan Paton book Cry, the Beloved Country

Source: Cry, the Beloved Country

Life, Lie, Star, Falseness

“No good has ever come from feeling guilty, neither intelligence, policy, nor compassion. The guilty do not pay attention to the object but only to themselves, and not even to their own interests, which might make sense, but to their anxieties.”

Paul Goodman (1911–1972) American novelist, playwright, poet and psychotherapist

Feeling, Intelligence, Sense

“put the car in "d" set the compass to "n" and get the "f"out of there”

Seth Grahame-Smith (1976) US fiction author

Source: How to Survive a Horror Movie

Cars

“Our task must be to free ourselves… by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and it's beauty.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Beauty, Nature, Beauty

“Here are the values that I stand for: honesty, equality, kindness, compassion, treating people the way you want to be treated and helping those in need. To me, those are traditional values.”

Ellen DeGeneres (1958) American stand-up comedian, television host, and actress

People, Way, Help

“Sarcasm and compassion are two of the qualities that make life on Earth tolerable.”

Nick Hornby book Songbook

Source: Songbook

Life

“He shook his head and squeezed my hand tight. "You are my courage, as I am your conscience," he whispered, "You are my heart-- I am your compassion. We are neither of us whole, alone. Do ye not know that, Sassenach?" --Jamie”

Diana Gabaldon book Drums of Autumn

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

Courage, Heart