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May you find inspiration in these thoughts and quotes by Pema Chodron from my large Daily Inspiration library of inspiring quotes and inspirational words.
Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.
- Pema Chodron
Related topics: Inspirational
At the root of all the harm we cause is ignorance.
- Pema Chodron
Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded.
It's a relationship between equals.
Only when we know our own darkness well
can we be present with the darkness of others.
Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.
- Pema Chodron
To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake
is to be continually thrown out of the nest.
- Pema Chodron
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Thank You,
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
The only reason we don't open our hearts and minds to other people
is that they trigger confusion in us
that we don't feel brave enough or sane enough to deal with.
To the degree that we look clearly and compassionately at ourselves,
we feel confident and fearless about looking into someone else's eyes.
- Pema Chodron
Abandon hope.
- Pema Chodron
If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need
but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him?
- 1 John 3:17 
People will forget what you said,
people will forget what you did,
but people will never forget
how you made them feel.
- Maya Angelou
If we have no peace,
it is because we have forgotten
that we belong to each other.
- Mother Teresa
You may call God love, you may call God goodness.
But the best name for God is compassion.
- Meister Eckhart
One can not reflect in streaming water.
Only those who know internal peace can give it to others.
- Lao Tzu
Give me your tired, your poor,
your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.
- written on the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
- St. Francis of Assisi
No man stands so tall as when he stoops to help a child.
- Anonymous (often attributed to Abraham Lincoln)
The best way to cheer yourself
is to try to cheer someone else up.
- Mark Twain
God has given us two hands, one to receive with
and the other to give with.
- Billy Graham
You cannot do a kindness too soon,
for you never know how soon it will be too late.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality.
- Arthur Schopenhauer
We receive this food in gratitude to all beings
Who have helped to bring it to our table,
And vow to respond in turn to those in need
With wisdom and compassion.
- Buddhist Blessing
The vast Cathedral of Your Being
becomes sanctuary for all creation
as you celebrate the universal sacraments
of compassion and joy.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Jesus preached more and taught more
about helping the poor and the sick and the hungry
than he did about heaven and hell.
Shouldn't that tell us something?
- John Grisham
Whether one believes in a religion or not,
and whether one believes in rebirth or not,
there isn't anyone who doesn't
appreciate kindness and compassion.
- Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama
Life is an exciting business,
and most exciting when it is lived for others.
- Helen Keller
Do to others as you would have them do to you.
- Luke 6:31 (the "Golden Rule")
For some of us, the world appears to provide
only a fixed quantity of each resource -
a limited amount of food, of money,
of love, of success, of appreciation.
For others, life is unlimited.
Their world expands with the generosity, compassion,
inventiveness, and service that they contribute.
In this world-view, money that is spent
or given away returns multiplied.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
If you want others to be happy, practice compassion.
If you want to be happy, practice compassion.
- Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama
A generous heart, kind speech,
and a life of service and compassion
are the things which renew humanity.
- The Buddha
Be kind whenever possible; and it is always possible.
- Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama
The happiness of one's own heart alone
cannot satisfy the soul;
one must try to include,
as necessary to one's own happiness,
the happiness of others.
- Paramahansa Yogananda
Deal with the faults of others as gently as with your own.
- Chinese proverb
Kindness is better than piety.
- Yiddish Proverb
We ourselves feel that what we are doing
is just a drop in the ocean.
But the ocean would be less
because of that missing drop.
- Mother Teresa
Where there is charity and wisdom,
there is neither fear nor ignorance.
- St. Francis of Assisi
It is a kingly act to assist the fallen.
- Mother Teresa
To know even one life has
breathed easier because you have lived.
This is to have succeeded.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
No one is to be called an enemy,
all are your benefactors, and no one does you harm.
You have no enemy except yourselves.
- St. Francis of Assisi
Be gentle first with yourself -
if you wish to be gentle with others.
- Lama Yeshe
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?"
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Give to your relatives, and to the needy, and to travelers.
Do not squander your wealth in wantonness.
- Quran 17:26
When will our consciences grow so tender
that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?
- Eleanor Roosevelt
Compassion is to be valued more than law.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Through violence, you may 'solve' one problem,
but you sow the seeds for another.
- Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama
Your worst enemy cannot harm you as much as
your own unguarded thoughts.
- The Buddha
For me, the most powerful expressions of true Christianity
in this material world are an unconditional love of all humans,
and an uncompromising commitment to caring for all
who are sick, infirm, or troubled -
as expressed in the biblical story of the Good Samaritan.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
I teach one thing and one only:
that is, suffering and the end of suffering.
- The Buddha
If you have men who will exclude any of God's creatures
from the shelter of compassion and pity,
you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men.
- St. Francis of Assisi
If I choose to bless another person,
I will always end up feeling more blessed.
- Marianne Williamson
We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men
who walked through the huts comforting others,
giving away their last piece of bread...
They offer sufficient proof that everything
can be taken from a man but one thing:
to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances,
to choose one's own way.
- Viktor E. Frankl
Kind words can be short and easy to speak,
but their echoes are truly endless.
- Mother Teresa
The brightest stars are those who
shine for the benefit of others.
- Anonymous
Wherever a man turns he can find someone who needs him.
- Albert Schweitzer
The worst sin toward our fellow creatures
is not to hate them,
but to be indifferent to them:
that's the essence of inhumanity.
- George Bernard Shaw
A part of kindness consists in loving people more than they deserve.
- Joseph Joubert
Whosoever is spared personal pain
must feel himself called
to help in diminishing the pain of others.
We must all carry our share of
the misery which lies upon the world.
- Albert Schweitzer
Love is the absence of judgment.
- Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama
When we quit thinking primarily about ourselves
and our own self-preservation,
we undergo a truly heroic transformation of consciousness.
- Joseph Campbell
Whatever you say, say with kindness.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Once you know yourself as a genuine seeker,
and when your own inner chamber is quite enlightened,
then comes the natural unfoldment of pure love and compassion
and a genuine desire to serve others.
- Rod Stryker
We cause ourselves untold misery whenever we believe
others to be imperfect and try to change them.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Be gentle first with yourself.
- Lama Yeshe
Compassion is the ultimate value in life.
Service is the ultimate action.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
I have found that among its other benefits,
giving liberates the soul of the giver.
- Maya Angelou
Nurturing is not complex.
It's simply being tuned in to the thing or person before you
and offering small gestures toward what it needs at that time.
- Mary Anne Radmacher
Great people are those who make others feel
that they, too, can become great.
- Mark Twain
One of the secrets of life is that
all that is really worth the doing
is what we do for others.
- Lewis Carroll
What do we live for, if it is not
to make life less difficult for each other?
- George Eliot
The biggest disease today is not leprosy or tuberculosis,
but rather the feeling of being unwanted.
- Mother Teresa
Let us touch the dying, the poor,
the lonely and the unwanted
according to the graces we have received
and let us not be ashamed
or slow to do the humble work.
- Mother Teresa
We shall never know all the good that a simple smile can do.
- Mother Teresa
Don't let a little dispute injure a great relationship.
- Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama
Our compassion and acts of selflessness
take us to the deeper truths.
- Amma
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May the world be kind to you,
and may your own thoughts be gentle upon yourself.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
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