You must rely on reason and science,” she said, “and be guided by a likewise rational ethic of human concern. You must do your utmost as individuals to improve your understanding, ability and compassion.

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.

No one reaches out to you for compassion or empathy so you can teach them how to behave better. They reach out to us because they believe in our capacity to know our darkness well enough to sit in the dark with them.

She considered compassion the highest virtue, but that night on Obstetric Ward B, it had had a twin sister whose face was invisible to Carla. The suffering women, however, had recognized it immediately: condemnation.

I came to recognise that, apart from her [Françoise's] own kinsfolk, the sufferings of humanity inspired in her a pity which increased in direct ratio to the distance separating the sufferers from herself.

We aren't really called to save the world, not even to save one person; Jesus does that. We are just called to love with abandon. We are called to enter into our neighbors' sufferings and love them right there.

Whenever tragic loss occurs, you either resist or you yield. Some people become bitter or deeply resentful; others become compassionate, wise, and loving. Yielding means inner acceptance of what is.You are open to life.

Deserves it! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.

The essence of an individual is made up of both their soul and spirit. Spirit is basically life energy, while the soul is what gives a person the ability to feel compassion, love, and all the things that make one human.

It is important never to separate love and knowledge, compassion and wisdom. A wisdom without compassion is closed upon itself and does not bear fruit. A compassion without wisdom is a madness and a cause of suffering.

Let us remember that animals are not mere resources for human consumption. They are splendid beings in their own right, who have evolved alongside us as co-inheritors of all the beauty and abundance of life on this planet

Although we are urged to walk in another man's shoes, I think, first, we have to walk in another pair of our own shoes. Doing that will free up a lot, including our ability to be more compassionate and less judgmental.

Both friend and enemy reside within us. One lives by the rule of compassion, the other by the rule of hard knocks. Though potential influence of either extreme is inevitable, our actions bear witness to the one we embrace.

I have a theory which I suspect is rather immoral,' Smiley went on, more lightly. 'Each of us has only a quantum of compassion. That if we lavish our concern on every stray cat, we never get to the centre of things.

When the range and depth of the suffering of others and what we do to one another are no longer bothers us, nor moves us to remedy the situation and stop the pain, then we have lost a part of our own humanity, our own soul.