95 Compassionate Quotes

In a world that often feels fast-paced and driven by competition, the power of compassion can sometimes be overlooked. However, acts of kindness, empathy, and understanding are what truly connect us as human beings and bring meaning to our lives. To celebrate and inspire these qualities within ourselves and others, we've curated a collection of the top 95 compassionate quotes. Whether you're seeking comfort, motivation, or a reminder of the goodness in the world, these quotes from various thinkers, leaders, and writers offer profound insights into the beauty and importance of compassion. Dive in and let these words of wisdom warm your heart and enlighten your soul.

1. “Our task must be to free ourselves... by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and it's beauty.” - Albert Einstein

2. “It is the job of thinking people not to be on the side of the executioners.” - Albert Camus

3. “I don't want to live in the kind of world where we don't look out for each other. Not just the people that are close to us, but anybody who needs a helping hand. I cant change the way anybody else thinks, or what they choose to do, but I can do my bit.” - Charles de Lint

4. “When two humans have lived together for many years it usually happens that each has tones of voice and expressions of face which are almost unendurably irritating to the other. Work on that. Bring fully into the consciousness of your patient that particular lift of his mother's eyebrows which he learned to dislike in the nursery, and let him think how much he dislikes it. Let him assume that she knows how annoying it is and does it to annoy - if you know your job he will not notice the immense improbability of the assumption. And, of course, never let him suspect that he has tones and looks which similarly annoy her. As he cannot see or hear himself, this easily managed.” - C.S. Lewis

5. “Be kind to people whether they deserve your kindness or not. If your kindness reaches the deserving good for you if your kindness reaches the undeserving take joy in your compassion.” - James Fadiman

6. “Compassion is the radicalism of our time.” - Dalai Lama XIV

7. “Pardon all runners,All speechless, alien winds,All mad waters.Pardon their impulses,Their wild attitudes,Their young flights, their reticence.When a message has no clothes onHow can it be spoken.” - Thomas Merton

8. “Men build too many walls and not enough bridges.” - Joseph Fort Newton

9. “The image titled “The Homeless, Psalm 85:10,” featured on the cover of ELEMENTAL, can evoke multiple levels of response. They may include the spiritual in the form of a studied meditation upon the multidimensional qualities of the painting itself; or an extended contemplation of the scripture in the title, which in the King James Bible reads as follows: “Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other.” The painting can also inspire a physical response in the form of tears as it calls to mind its more earth-bound aspects; namely, the very serious plight of those who truly are homeless in this world, whether born into such a condition, or forced into it by poverty or war.” - Aberjhani

10. “When we talk to our fellow men and they tell us about their troubles, we will listen to them carefully if we have love for them. We will have compassion for their suffering and pain, for we are God's creatures; we are a manifestation of the love of God.” - Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica

11. “The most worth-while thing is to try to put happiness into the lives of others.” - Sir Robert Baden-Powell

12. “The ragamuffin gospel reveals that Jesus forgives sins, including the sins of the flesh; that He is comfortable with sinners who remember how to show compassion; but that He cannot and will not have a relationship with pretenders in the Spirit.” - Brennan Manning

13. “In solitude we realize that nothing human is alien to us.” - Henri J.M. Nouwen

14. “Surrender your own poverty and acknowledge your nothingness to the Lord. Whether you understand it or not, God loves you, is present in you, lives in you, dwells in you, calls you, saves you and offers you an understanding and compassion which are like nothing you have ever found in a book or heard in a sermon.” - Thomas Merton

15. “The life of Jesus suggests that to be like Abba is to show compassion. Donald Gray expresses this: "Jesus reveals in an exceptionally human life what it is to live a divine life, a compassionate life.” - Brennan Manning

16. “Hurt people hurt people. We are not being judgmental by separating ourselves from such people. But we should do so with compassion. Compassion is defined as a "keen awareness of the suffering of another coupled with a desire to see it relieved." People hurt others as a result of their own inner strife and pain. Avoid the reactive response of believeing they are bad; they already think so and are acting that way. They aren't bad; they are damaged and they deserve compassion. Note that compassion is an internal process, an understanding of the painful and troubled road trod by another. It is not trying to change or fix that person.” - Will Bowen

17. “As for biblical or religious theory, I don’t ever want to fight about the details of the story, I want to live the reality of the message.” - Steve Maraboli

18. “In an age when nations and individuals routinely exchange murder for murder, when the healing grace of authentic spirituality is usurped by the divisive politics of religious organizations, and when broken hearts bleed pain in darkness without the relief of compassion, the voice of an exceptional poet producing exceptional work is not something the world can afford to dismiss.” - Aberjhani

19. “I don't want my life to be defined by what is etched on a tombstone. I want it to be defined by what is etched in the lives and hearts of those I've touched.” - Steve Maraboli

20. “Never question the power of one! Throughout history it has been the actions of only one person who has in inspired the movement of change.” - Steve Maraboli

21. “It only takes a split second to smile and forget, yet to someone that needed it, it can last a lifetime.” - Steve Maraboli

22. “Self-absorption in all its forms kills empathy, let alone compassion. When we focus on ourselves, our world contracts as our problems and preoccupations loom large. But when we focus on others, our world expands. Our own problems drift to the periphery of the mind and so seem smaller, and we increase our capacity for connection - or compassionate action.” - Daniel Goleman

23. “Be near your brothers. Not just one, but both of them.” - Fyodor Dostoevsky

24. “If I could make a dream real, I would not kill anything unless it could never be changed at heart.” - Robert Fanney

25. “What I've come to learn is that the world is never saved in grand messianic gestures, but in the simple accumulation of gentle, soft, almost invisible acts of compassion, everyday acts of compassion. In South Africa they have a phrase called ubuntu. Ubuntu comes out of a philosophy that says, the only way for me to be human is for you to reflect my humanity back at me. ” - Chris Abani

26. “When I tried this morning, after an hour or so of unhappy thinking, to dip back into my meditation, I took a new idea with me: compassion. I asked my heart if it could please infuse my soul with a more generous perspective on my mind's workings. Instead of thinking that I was a failure, could I perhaps accept that I am only a human being--and a normal one, at that?” - Elizabeth Gilbert

27. “Perhaps,” murmured his lordship, “I yielded to a compassionate impulse.”“A what?” gasped his best friend. “Oh, did you think I never did so?” said his lordship, the satirical glint in his eyes extremely pronounced. “You wrong me! I do, sometimes—not frequently, of course, but every now and then!” - Georgette Heyer

28. “Let us not underestimate how hard it is to be compassionate. Compassion is hard because it requires the inner disposition to go with others to place where they are weak, vulnerable, lonely, and broken. But this is not our spontaneous response to suffering. What we desire most is to do away with suffering by fleeing from it or finding a quick cure for it.” - Henri J.M. Nouwen

29. “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

30. “As we work to create light for others, we naturally light our own way.” - Mary Anne Radmacher

31. “Those who unlock your compassion are those to whom you've been assigned.” - Mike Murdock

32. “That's what I consider true generosity: You give your all, and yet you always feel as if it costs you nothing.” - Simone de Beauvoir

33. “The willingness to undertake such action cannot be based on certainties, but on those possibilities glimpsed in a reading of history different from the customary painful recounting of human cruelties. In such a reading we can find not only war but resistance to war, not only injustice but rebellion against injustice, not only selfishness but self-sacrifice, not only silence in the fact of tyranny but defiance, not only callousness but compassion.Human beings show a broad spectrum of qualities, but it is the worst of these that are usually emphasized, and the result, too often, is to dishearten us, diminish our spirit. And yet, historically, that spirit refuses to surrender.” - Howard Zinn

34. “Before I lost my father, I never understood the rituals surrounding funerals: the wake, the service itself, the reception afterward,the dinners prepared by well-meaning friends and delivered in plastic containers, even the popular habit of making poster boards filled with photos of the dear departed. But now I know why we do those things. It's busywork, all of it. I had so much to take care of, so many arrangements to make, so many people to inform, I didn't have a moment to be engulfed by the ocean of grief that was lapping at my heels. Instead, I waded through the shallows, performing task after task, grateful to have duties to propel me forward.” - Wendy Webb

35. “Compassion has no place in the natural order of the world which operates on the basis of necessity. Compassion opposes this order and is therefore best thought of as being in some way supernatural.” - John Berger

36. “I want the white one” - Sarah Dessen

37. “I think people believe empathy to be compassion, that compassion is an inner sense (a sense of the soul). But empathy is a sense, while compassion isn't a sense. Empathy is an affinity, a communion, a comprehension. They say that empathy is compassion, but I think that the two are independent of each other. You see, through empathy you will feel what another is feeling, including all those plans for manipulation and persuasion. You will feel everything, not just the parts that make you take compassion for the person, but also all the red flags! You see, empathy is a sense that works with the other senses such as foresight and intuition. So, we can feel compassion but we have to move with empathy.” - C. JoyBell C.

38. “I find the best way to love someone is not to change them, but instead, help them reveal the greatest version of themselves.” - Steve Maraboli

39. “You can see the same immorality or amorality in the Christian view of guilt and punishment. There are only two texts, both of them extreme and mutually contradictory. The Old Testament injunction is the one to exact an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth (it occurs in a passage of perfectly demented detail about the exact rules governing mutual ox-goring; you should look it up in its context (Exodus 21). The second is from the Gospels and says that only those without sin should cast the first stone. The first is a moral basis for capital punishment and other barbarities; the second is so relativistic and "nonjudgmental" that it would not allow the prosecution of Charles Manson. Our few notions of justice have had to evolve despite these absurd codes of ultra vindictiveness and ultracompassion.” - Christopher Hitchens

40. “A GUIDED TOUR OF SUFFERING: To your left, perhaps your right, perhaps even straight ahead, you find a small black room. In it sits a Jew. He is scum. He is starving. He is afraid. Please - try not to look away.” - Markus Zusak

41. “Behold I do not give lectures or a little charity, when I give I give myself.” - Walt Whitman

42. “I am grateful to realize that my desires do not entitle me to add to another's suffering.” - Zoe Weil

43. “All it takes for generosity to flow is awareness. By actively pursuing awareness and knowledge, we can make choices that cause less harm and greater good to others in the global community of our shared earth.” - Zoe Weil

44. “One who is patient glows with an inner radiance.” - Allan Lokos

45. “The beauty and mystery of this world only emerges through affection, attention, interest and compassion . . . open your eyes wide and actually see this world by attending to its colors, details and irony.” - Orhan Pamuk

46. “When good people consider you the bad guy, you develop a heart to help the bad ones. You actually understand them.” - Criss Jami

47. “The greater ignorance towards a country is not ignoring what its politicians have to say, it is ignoring what the inmates in its prisons have to say.” - Criss Jami

48. “Love begets wisdom, thus it is, as often misconceived, more than vain layers of tenderness; it is inherently rational and comprehensive of the problem within the problem: for instance, envy is one of the most excused sins in the media of political correctness. Those you find most attractive, or seem to have it all, are often some of the most insecure at heart, and that is because people assume that they do not need anything but defamation.” - Criss Jami

49. “When hiding ourselves behind religiosity becomes the order of the day, grace is left by the wayside; without being honest about our own sin, we will never show compassion toward others. If we are to adorn ourselves with anything, it should be with compassion and honesty—the foundations of connecting to our community.” - Matt Litton

50. “When we refuse to work with our disappointment, we break the Precepts: rather than experience the disappointment, we resort to anger, greed, gossip, criticism. Yet it's the moment of being that disappointment which is fruitful; and, if we are not willing to do that, at least we should notice that we are not willing. The moment of disappointment in life is an incomparable gift that we receive many times a day if we're alert. This gift is always present in anyone's life, that moment when 'It's not the way I want it!” - Charlotte Joko Beck

51. “I probably felt more resentment for what I personally was to suffer than for the wrong they were doing to anyone and everyone. But at that time I was determined not to put up with badly behaved people more out of my own interest than because I wanted them to become good people.” - St. Augustine of Hippo

52. “A true gentleman is one that apologizes anyways, even though he has not offended a lady intentionally. He is in a class all of his own because he knows the value of a woman's heart.” - Shannon Alder

53. “Those who are happiest are those who do the most for others.” - Booker T. Washington

54. “Observe & accept what ever arises & know that everything is as it needs to be.” - Allan Lokos

55. “You touch some of the reasons for my going, not for my staying away.” - Charles Dickens

56. “There is no small act of kindness.Every compassionate act makes large the world.” - Mary Anne Radmacher

57. “The crack in your heart allows light in. ~ GOOD FORTUNE page 238” - Leslie Bratspis

58. “I never lie," I said offhand. "At least not to those I don't love.” - Anne Rice

59. “It is therefore of supreme importance that we consent to live not for ourselves but for others. When we do this we will be able first of all to face and accept our own limitations. As long as we secretly adore ourselves, our own deficiencies will remain to torture us with an apparent defilement. But if we live for others, we will gradually discover that no expects us to be 'as gods'. We will see that we are human, like everyone else, that we all have weaknesses and deficiencies, and that these limitations of ours play a most important part in all our lives. It is because of them that we need others and others need us. We are not all weak in the same spots, and so we supplement and complete one another, each one making up in himself for the lack in another.” - Thomas Merton

60. “One who utters speech that isn't rough But instructive and truthfulSo that he offends no one, Him I call Brahmin.” - Anonymous

61. “I don't know how to stop the atrocities. I don't know how to make people care. But looking into my sister's eyes, we seem to have carved out something between us that none of the madness can touch. Invisible threads.” - Lisa Shannon

62. “The tree was so old, and stood there so alone, that his childish heart had been filled with compassion; if no one else on the farm gave it a thought, he would at least do his best to, even though he suspected that his child's words and child's deeds didn't make much difference. It had stood there before he was born, and would be standing there after he was dead, but perhaps, even so, it was pleased that he stroked its bark every time he passed, and sometimes, when he was sure he wasn't observed, even pressed his cheek against it.” - Karl Ove Knausgård

63. “She said, "You're a warrior. So how do you kill without rage?""In compassion. Because of necessity." Hrahima set the empty water bowl back in Samarkar's hands. "The same way you carry water.” - Elizabeth Bear

64. “Nothing that we despise in other men is inherently absent from ourselves. We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or don't do, and more in light of what they suffer.” - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

65. “Thoughts, words, emotions & deeds not coming from love are likely coming from fear.” - Allan Lokos

66. “And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral drest in his shroud.” - Walt Whitman

67. “Every person is a living treasure box. Listening holds the key.” - Mollie Marti

68. “Hope finds its fulfillment when nurtured through faith and shared with love.” - Mollie Marti

69. “Your truest spiritual path will lead you to yourself for it is devoted to becoming.” - Mollie Marti

70. “Her own misery filled her heart—there was no room in it for other people's sorrow.” - George Eliot

71. “A visitor asked Lincoln what good news he could take home from an audience with the august executive. The president spun a story about a machine that baffled a chess champion by beating him thrice. The stunned champ cried while inspecting the machine, "There's a man in there!"Lincoln's good news, he confided from the heights of leadership, was that there was in fact a man in there.” - Shelby Foote

72. “The news can be poison to your soul, don't let it kill your joy, be compassionate but not consumed. Be empathetic not enraged.” - Rob Liano

73. “[...] during one train stop, I watched as another guard with a spirit of empathy, ran out into an apple orchard and picked apples. He carried his jacket like a bag and filled it with apples. The kind German came to our open train window and handed us each an apple. The juicy apple tasted so delicious. I so appreciated that apple and his unusual compassion.” - Omanson, Oliver

74. “Arrogance is someone claiming to have come to Christ, but they won't spend more than five minutes listening to your journey because they are more concerned about their own well being, rather than being a true disciple of Christ. Blessed is the person that takes the time to heal and hear another person so they can move on.” - Shannon L. Alder

75. “Those who say life is knocking them down and giving them a tough time are usually the first to beat themselves up. Be on your own side.” - Rasheed Ogunlaru

76. “The path towards peace is not for the righteous, the ethical, the active and the compassionate to shit on the malicious, the complacent, the violent and the ignorant. The path towards peace is to be peaceful.” - Ilyas Kassam

77. “Compassion is an unstable emotion. It needs to be translated into action, or it withers. The question of what to do with the feelings that have been aroused, the knowledge that has been communicated. If one feels that there is nothing 'we' can do -- but who is that 'we'? -- and nothing 'they' can do either -- and who are 'they' -- then one starts to get bored, cynical, apathetic.” - Susan Sontag

78. “Dare we care at all about current fashions if that means reducing our ability to help hungry neighbors? How many more luxuries should we buy for ourselves and our children when others are dying for lack of bread?” - Ron Sider

79. “To suffer is one thing; another thing is living with the photographed images of suffering, which does not necessarily strengthen conscience and the ability to be compassionate. It can also corrupt them. Once one has seen such images, one has started down the road of seeing more - and more. Images transfix. Images anesthetize.” - Susan Sontag

80. “...writers, like priests, should have compassion...and a sensitivity to pain...” - John Geddes

81. “Familiarity is the gateway drug to empathy.” - iO Tillett Wright

82. “Considering the notion that the spiritual battlefield is infinitely greater than the physical, perhaps God is more willing to bless with a sort of divine ecstasy those who see the devil as the enemy rather than those who see other people as the enemies.” - Criss Jami

83. “The point is not that this world is too sad to love or too glad not to love; the point is that when you do love a thing, its gladness is a reason for loving it, and its sadness a reason for loving it more.” - G.K. Chesterton

84. “Love is my decision to make your problem my problem.” - Robert Schuller

85. “They looked at me, and were so full of delight in the pleasure they were giving me that some final thread of resistance gave way and I understood not only how entirely generous they were but also that generosity might be the greatest pleasure there is.” - William Maxwell

86. “Compassion is born from the imagination. To have the desire to be compassionate, you have to imagine a world that’s better than the one you live in.” - Ryan Henry Ward Artist

87. “Tomorrow's leaders will not lead dictating from the front, nor pushing from the back. They will lead from the centre - from the heart” - Rasheed Ogunlaru

88. “The fourth gift is Compassion. May you be gentle with yourself and others. May you forgive those who hurt you and yourself when you make mistakes.” - Charlene Costanzo

89. “Cruel people offer pity when they no longer feel threatened. However, kind people offer compassion and understanding regardless.” - Shannon L. Alder

90. “Once we are able to combine a feeling of empathy for others with a profound understanding of the suffering they experience, we become able to generate genuine compassion for them. We must work at this continually.” - His Holiness the Dalai Lama

91. “I feel the capacity to care is the thing which gives life its deepest significance.” - Pablo Casals

92. “A single act of kindness is like a drop of oil on a patch of dry skin—seeping, spreading, and affecting more than the original need.” - Richelle E. Goodrich

93. “Where is God when it hurts? We know one answer because God came to earth and showed us. You need only follow Jesus around and note how he responded to the tragedies of his day: large-scale tragedies such as an act of government terrorism in the temple or a tower collapsing on eighteen innocent bystanders; as well as small tragedies, such as a widow who has lost her only son or even a Roman soldier whose servant has fallen ill. At moments like these Jesus never delivered sermons about judgment or the need to accept God’s mysterious providence. Instead he responded with compassion – a word from Latin which simply means, “to suffer with” – and comfort and healings. God stands on the side of those who suffer. (pp.27-28/What Good Is God?)” - Philip Yancey

94. “It is when we experience God most closely that our hearts burn most passionately to show his compassion to others.” - Dillon Burroughs

95. “We must throw out the old, fear-based thought-forms and evolve, and begin to live as higher beings of compassion.” - Bryant McGill