Paul Theroux Quotes

It is selfish to concern oneself with tragedies.

A tear dries quickly when it is shed for troubles of others.

I've always wanted to do charity stuff. I'm such a nurturer and love taking care of people.

You never know how many people are compassionate about something, especially when it's not happening to you. You just hope somebody's out there helping.

I don't really have a lot of appropriate feelings for people on an individual basis, but I've always wanted to make people happy.

Developing our capacity for compassion makes it possible for us to help others in a more skillful and effective way. And compassion helps us as well.

Compassion is a call, a demand of nature, to relieve the unhappy as hunger is a natural call for food.

The stirrings of morality emerge early in childhood. Toddlers spontaneously offer toys and help to others and try to comfort people they see in distress.

The human capacity for compassion is not a reflex that is triggered automatically by the presence of another living thing.

True compassion means not only feeling another's pain but also being moved to help relieve it.

The problem with compassion is that it is not photogenic.

Compassion doesn't, of course, mean feeling sorry for people, or pity, which is how the word has become emasculated in a way.

It seemed to me that I was put on earth to take care of people. That is what I should be doing, and I never got tired of it.

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

I'm a bleeding heart. I see lots of things to bleed about.

In being aware of others' hunger, we contribute to a more empathic world.

I'm not someone who seeks out stories of people who are suffering. I think they just kind of find me.

We all, as individuals, can and should act compassionately and charitably. We can volunteer our time, energy, and dollars to help the underprivileged. We can feed the hungry, house the homeless. Most of us feel a moral and ethical responsibility to do so - to 'do unto others.'

Fraternity and compassion are written into nature's DNA.

That's when I feel most alive, when I'm helping people.

Tears came to my eyes when I read of a mere boy in one of our eastern cities who noticed a vagrant asleep on a sidewalk and who then went to his own room, retrieved his own pillow, and placed it beneath the head of that one whom he knew not. Perhaps there came from the precious past the welcome words: 'Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me' (Matt. 25:40).

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

Although there are people saying I'm putting on a show, I'm hoping more will emulate my 'performance.' If more people did, more needy people would get help.

The humanitarian lays stress almost solely upon breadth of knowledge and sympathy.

Whenever I see people in difficulty, I just try to help them. In fact, I believe I have helped over 700,000 people in my life.