#compassion

The nature of compassion isn't coming to terms with your own suffering and applying it to others: It's knowing that other folks around you suffer and, no matter what happens to you, no matter how lucky or unlucky you are, they keep suffering. And if you can do something about that, then you do it, and you do it without whining or waving your own fuckin' cross for the world to see. You do it because it's the right thing to do. ↗

— John Connolly

#suffer #suffering #nature

When we know ourselves to be connected to all others, acting compassionately is simply the natural thing to do. ↗

— Rachel Naomi Remen

#connection #kindness #nature

Whoever is full of wisdom is naturally compassionate; in fact we recognize that someone has gained spiritual wisdom by seeing their compassionate behavior. . . . Individuals and countries with power need to develop wisdom and compassion, for without these attributes, there is a danger that the power will be used to oppress and exploit others. (31) ↗

— Ravi Ravindra

#spiritual-wisdom #wisdom #nature

In the midst of her tears came the thought, "When people are in danger, they ask God to save them;" and, slipping down upon her knees, she said her prayer as she had never said it before, for when human help seems gone we turn to Him as naturally as lost children cry to their father, and feel sure that he will hear and answer them. ↗

— Louisa May Alcott

#compassion #god #hope #nature

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

#defiance #despair #done #god #greatest

I always try to share with others the idea that in order to become compassionate it is not necessary to become religious. ↗

— Dalai Lama XIV

#religion #religion

You can see the same immorality or amorality in the Christian view of guilt and punishment. There are only two texts, both of them extreme and mutually contradictory. The Old Testament injunction is the one to exact an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth (it occurs in a passage of perfectly demented detail about the exact rules governing mutual ox-goring; you should look it up in its context (Exodus 21). The second is from the Gospels and says that only those without sin should cast the first stone. The first is a moral basis for capital punishment and other barbarities; the second is so relativistic and "nonjudgmental" that it would not allow the prosecution of Charles Manson. Our few notions of justice have had to evolve despite these absurd codes of ultra vindictiveness and ultracompassion. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#christianity #compassion #guilt #immorality #justice

If I could make a dream real, I would not kill anything unless it could never be changed at heart. ↗

— Robert Fanney

#death #dream #killing #luthiel #change

You honor yourself by acting with dignity and composure. ↗

— Allan Lokos

#culture #education #ethics #inspiration #meditation

Always keep an open mind and a compassionate heart. ↗

— Phil Jackson

#always #compassionate #heart #keep #mind