Alexandre Dumas Quotes

Compassion is not a virtue -- it is a commitment. It's not something we have or don't have -- it's something we choose to practice.

A love for humanity came over me, and watered and fertilised the fields of my inner world which had been lying fallow, and this love of humanity vented itself in a vast compassion.

South Africans are caring, compassionate and loving people.

I was brought up to believe that a person must be rescued when drowning, regardless of religion and nationality.

In my view, the best of humanity is in our exercise of empathy and compassion. It's when we challenge ourselves to walk in the shoes of someone whose pain or plight might seem so different than yours that it's almost incomprehensible.

I believe compassion to be one of the few things we can practice that will bring immediate and long-term happiness to our lives.

It's compassion that makes gods of us.

It is my observations, though, that happiness limits the amount of suffering one is willing to inflict upon others

I think of compassion as the fundamental religious experience and, unless that is there, you have nothing.

It is a pleasure appropriate to man, for him to save a fellow-man, and gratitude is acquired in no better way.

Beneficence is a duty. He who frequently practices it, and sees his benevolent intentions realized, at length comes really to love him to whom he has done good. When, therefore, it is said, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," it is not meant, thou shalt love him first and do him good in consequence of that love, but, thou shalt do good to thy neighbor; and this thy beneficence will engender in thee that love to mankind which is the fulness and consummation of the inclination to do good.

universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality.

I call him religious who understands the suffering of others.

I truly believe that compassion provides the basis of human survival.

When we are devoted to the development of kindness, it becomes our ready response, so that reacting from compassion, from caring, is not a question of giving ourselves a lecture: 'I don't really feel like it, but I'd better be helpful, or what would people think?'

Compassion is an act of tolerance where kindness and forgiveness reign. When we make the compassionate choice, we enhance the dignity of each individual, which is the very essence of loving them.

Compassion is the ultimate expression of your highest self

We all have the potential to show others love and affection, but as we progress in our materialistic world, these values tend to remain dormant. We can develop them on the basis of common sense, common experience and scientific findings. The response to the recent tragedy in the Philippines is an example of how such values are awakened; people helped simply because others are suffering and in need of support.

Peace of heart that is won by refusing to bear the common yoke of human sympathy is a peace unworthy of a Christian. To seek tranquility by stopping our ears to the cries of human pain is to make ourselves not Christian but a kind of degenerate stoic having no relation either to stoicism or Christianity.

If you follow your heart, if you listen to your gut, and if you extend your hand to help another, not for any agenda, but for the sake of humanity, you are going to find the truth.

Compassion is the wish to see others free from suffering.

In our concern for others, we worry less about ourselves. When we worry less about ourselves an experience of our own suffering is less intense. What does this tell us? Firstly, because our every action has a universal dimension, a potential impact on others' happiness, ethics are necessary as a means to ensure that we do not harm others. Secondly, it tells us that genuine happiness consists in those spiritual qualities of love, compassion, patience, tolerance and forgiveness and so on. For it is these which provide both for our happiness and others' happiness.

The whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness of the other.... The whole purpose of life is to live by love.

Love is the only way to rescue humanity from all ills.

The essence of compassion is a desire to alleviate the suffering of others and to promote their well-being