“They learned no compassion from their own anguish. Thus their suffering was wasted.”

“Compassion is, by definition, relational. Compassion literally means 'to suffer with,' which implies a basic mutuality in the experience of suffering. The emotion of compassion springs from the recognition that the human experience is imperfect.”

“Does the open wound in another's breast soften the pain of the gaping wound in our own? Or does the blood which is welling from another man's side staunch that which is pouring from our own? Does the general anguish of our fellow creatures lessen our own private and particular anguish? No, no, each suffers on his own account, each struggles with his own grief, each sheds his own tears.”

“ For there to be compassion from people, they first must suffer”

“Compassion is the wish to see others free from suffering.”

“in languages that derive from Latin "compassion" means: we cannot look on coolly as others suffer; or, we sympathize with those who suffer”