Lafcadio Hearn Quotes

Try to do unto others as you would have them do to you, and do not be discouraged if they fail sometimes. It is much better that they should fail than you should.

How you treat the helpless is the real test of morality. Lots of people are flunking that test big time.

Compassion is aptly summed up in the Golden Rule, which asks us to look into our own hearts, discover what gives us pain, and then refuse, under any circumstance whatsoever, to inflict that pain on anybody else. Compassion can be defined, therefore, as an attitude of principled, consistent altruism.

Cruelty is the only sin.

Anywhere I see suffering, that is where I want to be, doing what I can.

I have always held firmly to the thought that each one of us can do a little to bring some portion of misery to an end.

The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was: 'If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?' But... the good Samaritan reversed the question: 'If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?'

The true basis of morality is utility; that is, the adaptation of our actions to the promotion of the general welfare and happiness; the endeavour so to rule our lives that we may serve and bless mankind.

One is guilty of all abjection that one does not help to relieve.

How can you regret helping a suffering patient?

A man is ethical only when life, as such, is sacred to him, that of plants and animals as that of his fellow men, and when he devotes himself helpfully to all life that is in need of help.

The sturdiest pillars of human morality are compassion and a sense of justice.

Human morality is unthinkable without empathy.

Pain and sorrow and misery have a right to our assistance: compassion puts us in mind of the debt, and that we owe it to ourselves as well as to the distressed.

Humanitarianism consists in never sacrificing a human being to a purpose.

Jesus had a universal concern for those who suffered that transcended the rules of the ancient world.

It is selfish to concern oneself with tragedies.

I have empathy; I am humane. I understand human misery.

For me, an area of moral clarity is: you're in front of someone who's suffering and you have the tools at your disposal to alleviate that suffering or even eradicate it, and you act.

Think occasionally of the suffering of which you spare yourself the sight.

Because a human being is endowed with empathy, he violates the natural order if he does not reach out to those who need care. Responding to this empathy, one is in harmony with the order of things, with dharma; otherwise, one is not.

What is the purpose of our might if we do not use it for good.

May I never see in the patient anything but a fellow creature in pain.

I do this because it pleases me, and there is nothing I would not do so as human effort goes, to advance any movement designed to reach and rescue perishing humanity. I have a heart for others and that is why I am in this work. When I see suffering about me, I myself suffer, and so when I put forth my efforts to relieve others, I am simply working for myself. I do not consider that I have made any sacrifice whatever; no man does unless he violates his conscience

They charge me with fanaticism. If to be feelingly alive to the suffering of my fellow creatures is to be a fanatic, I am one of the most incurable fanatics ever permitted to be at large.