Facebook share   Tweet This   Email this

Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded.
by Pema Chodron

Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded.
It's a relationship between equals.
Only when we know our own darkness well
can we be present with the darkness of others.
Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.
- Pema Chodron

Related topics: Inspirational Life Human-Nature Psychology Buddhist Compassion

The only reason we don't open our hearts and minds to other people
is that they trigger confusion in us
that we don't feel brave enough or sane enough to deal with.
To the degree that we look clearly and compassionately at ourselves,
we feel confident and fearless about looking into someone else's eyes.
- Pema Chodron

Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.
- Pema Chodron

At the root of all the harm we cause is ignorance.
- Pema Chodron

Please sign-up for my Free Daily Inspirational Quotes and Insights Email on the form below.

Thank you for joining me on this journey we call life,
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake
is to be continually thrown out of the nest.
- Pema Chodron

Abandon hope.
- Pema Chodron

No man stands so tall as when he stoops to help a child.
- Anonymous (often attributed to Abraham Lincoln)

If you want others to be happy, practice compassion.
If you want to be happy, practice compassion.
- Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama

One can not reflect in streaming water.
Only those who know internal peace can give it to others.
- Lao Tzu

People will forget what you said,
people will forget what you did,
but people will never forget
how you made them feel.
- Maya Angelou

You may call God love, you may call God goodness.
But the best name for God is compassion.
- Meister Eckhart

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men
who walked through the huts comforting others,
giving away their last piece of bread...
They offer sufficient proof that everything
can be taken from a man but one thing:
to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances,
to choose one's own way.
- Viktor E. Frankl

Give me your tired, your poor,
your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.
- written on the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor

Universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality.
- Arthur Schopenhauer

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

Our compassion and acts of selflessness
take us to the deeper truths.
- Amma

Love is the absence of judgment.
- Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama

Whether one believes in a religion or not,
and whether one believes in rebirth or not,
there isn't anyone who doesn't
appreciate kindness and compassion.
- Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama

A generous heart, kind speech,
and a life of service and compassion
are the things which renew humanity.
- The Buddha

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

We can never be the better for our religion
if our neighbor is the worse for it.
- Anonymous

No one has ever become poor by giving.
- Anne Frank

Our prime purpose in this life is to help others.
And if you can't help them, at least don't hurt them.
- Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama

We may have found a cure for most evils;
but we have found no remedy for the worst of them all,
the apathy of human beings.
- Helen Keller

We really have to understand the person we want to love.
If our love is only a will to possess, it is not love.
- Thich Nhat Hanh

When we do the best that we can,
we never know what miracle is wrought in our life,
or in the life of another.
- Helen Keller

I believe that every human mind feels pleasure
in doing good to another.
- Thomas Jefferson

Nobody cares how much you know,
until they know how much you care.
- attributed to Theodore Roosevelt, among others,
but probably earlier and anonymous

If you wish to experience peace,
provide peace for another.
- Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama

If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need
but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him?
- 1 John 3:17

A man is truly ethical only when he obeys
the compulsion to help all life which he is able to assist,
and shrinks from injuring anything that lives.
- Albert Schweitzer

Whatever words we utter should be chosen with care
for people will hear them and be influenced
by them for good or ill.
- The Buddha

We can live without religion and meditation,
but we cannot survive without human affection.
- Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama

When I am getting ready to reason with a man,
I spend one-third of my time thinking about myself
and what I am going to say
and two-thirds about him and what he is going to say.
- Abraham Lincoln

If there is anything that a man can do well,
I say let him do it. Give him a chance.
- Abraham Lincoln

We must use time wisely and forever realize
that the time is always ripe to do right.
- Nelson Mandela

You can give without loving,
but you can never love without giving.
- Robert Louis Stevenson

I want you to be concerned about your next door neighbor.
Do you know your next door neighbor?
- Mother Teresa

The worst sin toward our fellow creatures
is not to hate them,
but to be indifferent to them:
that's the essence of inhumanity.
- George Bernard Shaw

Whoever is happy will make others happy too.
- Anne Frank

The value of a man should be seen in what he gives
and not in what he is able to receive.
- Albert Einstein

With courage, you will dare to take risks,
have the strength to be compassionate,
and the wisdom to be humble.
Courage is the foundation of integrity.
- Keshavan Nair

The best way to cheer yourself
is to try to cheer someone else up.
- Mark Twain

Anchoring in soft mud is dangerous.
Anchor thyself to the rocks of Faith, Compassion, and Service.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

The smallest act of kindness
is worth more than the grandest intention.
- Oscar Wilde

Too often we underestimate the power of a touch,
a smile, a kind word, a listening ear,
an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring,
all of which have the potential to turn a life around.
- Leo Buscaglia

People don't care how much you know
until they know how much they care.
- John C. Maxwell

Let us touch the dying, the poor,
the lonely and the unwanted
according to the graces we have received
and let us not be ashamed
or slow to do the humble work.
- Mother Teresa

To know even one life has
breathed easier because you have lived.
This is to have succeeded.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Indifference and neglect often
do much more damage than outright dislike.
- J. K. Rowling

If in our daily life we can smile,
if we can be peaceful and happy,
not only we, but everyone will profit from it.
This is the most basic kind of peace work.
- Thich Nhat Hanh

When will our consciences grow so tender
that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?
- Eleanor Roosevelt

One of the sanest, surest, and most generous joys of life
comes from being happy over the good fortune of others.
- Robert A. Heinlein

Once you know yourself as a genuine seeker,
and when your own inner chamber is quite enlightened,
then comes the natural unfoldment of pure love and compassion
and a genuine desire to serve others.
- Rod Stryker

No one is to be called an enemy,
all are your benefactors, and no one does you harm.
You have no enemy except yourselves.
- St. Francis of Assisi

The happiness of one's own heart alone
cannot satisfy the soul;
one must try to include,
as necessary to one's own happiness,
the happiness of others.
- Paramahansa Yogananda

For some of us, the world appears to provide
only a fixed quantity of each resource -
a limited amount of food, of money,
of love, of success, of appreciation.
For others, life is unlimited.
Their world expands with the generosity, compassion,
inventiveness, and service that they contribute.
In this world-view, money that is spent
or given away returns multiplied.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Wherever a man turns he can find someone who needs him.
- Albert Schweitzer

I teach one thing and one only:
that is, suffering and the end of suffering.
- The Buddha

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
- St. Francis of Assisi

Kindness is better than piety.
- Yiddish Proverb

I have found that among its other benefits,
giving liberates the soul of the giver.
- Maya Angelou

I have always found that mercy bears
richer fruits than strict justice.
- Abraham Lincoln

Where there is charity and wisdom,
there is neither fear nor ignorance.
- St. Francis of Assisi

Whosoever is spared personal pain
must feel himself called
to help in diminishing the pain of others.
We must all carry our share of
the misery which lies upon the world.
- Albert Schweitzer

Wherever there is a human being,
there is an opportunity for a kindness.
- Seneca

I Receive ALL of Life with Thanksgiving -
I have gratitude for EVERYTHING
that has ever occurred to bring me to this moment.
I give thanks for the joys and the sufferings,
the moments of peace and the flashes of anger,
the compassion and the indifference,
the roar of my courage and the cold sweat of my fear.
I accept gratefully the entirety of my past and my present life.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Deal with the faults of others as gently as with your own.
- Chinese proverb

When we quit thinking primarily about ourselves
and our own self-preservation,
we undergo a truly heroic transformation of consciousness.
- Joseph Campbell

We receive this food in gratitude to all beings
Who have helped to bring it to our table,
And vow to respond in turn to those in need
With wisdom and compassion.
- Buddhist Blessing

Kind words can be short and easy to speak,
but their echoes are truly endless.
- Mother Teresa

Thank you for visiting: Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. by Pema Chodron.

Please sign up on the form below to receive my Free Daily Inspiration - Daily Quotes email.

May the world be kind to you, and may your own thoughts be gentle upon yourself.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie