Cesare Pavese Quotes

I used to believe that hurting would make you more alive to the hurting of others. I used to believe in feeling bad because somebody else did. Now I'm not so sure of either.

Compassion is one of the highest states of consciousness that you can choose to assist you in times of enormous pain.

Humility is truth.

It is a glorious thing to be indifferent to suffering, but only to one's own suffering.

When we have ceased to love the stench of the human animal, either in others or in ourselves, then are we condemned to misery, and clear thinking can begin.

Everyone loses touch with their aspiration, and we need the heart to return to what we really care about. All of this is based on developing greater lovingkindness and compassion.

I believe, in general, that even people that are self-pitying, you can feel for them.

I'm not generally a sensitive person, but I tend to be more sensitive toward others and what they're going through. I don't know if that's the healthiest thing, but it's the truth.

A real good artist learns to be a better person through all the changes they've been through. They keep their loving and honesty growing and learn to look at the world and not be full of hatred.

I realized that a great deal of life is exactly and precisely about being able to feel pain: my own and other people's.

With growing awareness, you can see where you're caught or where you suffer or where you create suffering. You can then turn toward the difficulties that arise in your life with compassion, bow, and say, these too are part of human incarnation.

For a practitioner of love and compassion, an enemy is one of the most important teachers. Without an enemy you cannot practice tolerance, and without tolerance you cannot build a sound basis of compassion.

Marcus Aurelius appoints personal character and conscience the ultimate refuge of happiness-seekers: the only place where dreams of happiness, doomed to die childless and intestate anywhere else, are not bound to be frustrated.

My Brain and My Heart are my Temples. My true Religion is Kindness.

There is no humanity before that which starts with yourself.

Meditation is about cultivating constructive emotions, like altruism, compassion.

The capacity to give one's attention to a sufferer is a very rare and difficult thing; it is almost a miracle; it is a miracle. Nearly all those who think they have the capacity do not possess it.

We, like the Mother of the World, become the compassionate presence that can hold, with tenderness, the rising and passing waves of suffering.

You may regret calamities if you can thereby help the sufferer, but if you cannot, mind your own business.

The energy of compassion is very strong. We suffer. That is real. But we have learned not to get angry and not to allow ourselves to be carried by anger. We realize right away that that is fear. That is corruption.

I take the greatest lesson from compassion - it takes away all the conceit out of my life.

I don't go in for being sorry for people. For one thing it's insulting. One is only sorry for people when they're sorry for themselves. Self-pity is one of the biggest stumbling blocks in the world today.

What I would do to change this planet is have everyone meditate and look inside. Then we'd have a happier, more service-oriented, less-needy world.

Say to yourself in the early morning: I shall meet today ungrateful, violent, treacherous, envious, uncharitable men. All of these things have come upon them through ignorance of real good and ill... I can neither be harmed by any of them, for no man will involve me in wrong, nor can I be angry with my kinsman or hate him; for we have come into the world to work together.

When another blames you or hates you, or people voice similar criticisms, go to their souls, penetrate inside and see what sort of people they are. You will realize that there is no need to be racked with anxiety that they should hold any particular opinion about you.