Quotes about Compassion

If we take good care of ourselves, we help everyone. We stop being a source of suffering to the world, and we become a reservoir of joy and freshness. Here and there are people who know how to take good care of themselves, who live joyfully and happily. They are our strongest support. Whatever they do, they do for everyone.

When we're able to love our enemy, that person is no longer our enemy. The idea of "enemy" vanishes and is replaced by the person who is suffering and needs our compassion.

When we cannot communicate, we suffer, and we spill our suffering on to other people. We can find ways to open the doors of communication again.

We are imprisoned in our small selves, thinking only of the comfortable conditions for this small self, while we destroy our large self.

True love includes a sense of responsibility and accepting the other person as she is, with all her strengths and weaknesses. If you only like the best things in a person, that is not love.

True love is made of four elements: loving kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity. In Sanskrit, these are, maitri, karuna, mudita, and upeksha.

You discover that the main cause of your suffering is the seed of anger in you, because it has been watered too often, by yourself and by other people.

If you can see your mother as a fragile five-year-old girl, then you can forgive her very easily with compassion. The five-year-old girl who was your mother is always alive in her and in you.

We wanted peace. We did not care about anyone's victory or defeat. We just wanted the bombs to stop falling on us.

The most effective way to show compassion to another is to listen, rather than talk. You have an opportunity to practice deep, compassionate listening. If you can listen to the other person with compassion, your listening is like a salve for her wound. In the practice of compassionate listening, you listen with only one purpose, which is to give the other person the chance to speak out and to suffer less.

It is not by going out for a demonstration against nuclear missiles that we can bring about peace. It is with our capacity of smiling, breathing, and being peace that we can make peace.

Shallow understanding accompanies shallow compassion. Great understanding goes with great compassion.