“People are unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered. Love them anyway. If you do good, people may accuse you of selfish motives. Do good anyway. If you are successful, you may win false friends and true enemies. Succeed anyway. The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway. Honesty and transparency make you vulnerable. Be honest and transparent anyway. What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight. Build anyway. People who really want help may attack you if you help them. Help them anyway. Give the world the best you have and you may get hurt. Give the world your best anyway.” Mother Teresa
“In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.” Christian. Martin Luther King
“What is evil but good tortured by its own hunger and thirst? Verily when good is hungry it seeks food even in dark caves, and when it thirsts it drinks even of dead waters…” Sufi. Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet.
“O Heavenly Father, we beseech thee to have mercy upon all thy children who are living in mental darkness. Restore them to strength of mind and cheerfulness of spirit, and give them health and peace.” Christian. The Episcopal Book of Common Prayer
“Hatreds never cease through hatreds in this world; through love alone they cease. This is the eternal law.” Buddhism. Dhammapada 3-5.
“According to Anas ibn Malik, the Prophet said, ‘Help your brother whether he is oppressor or oppressed.’ Anas replied to him, ‘O Messenger of God, a man who is oppressed I am ready to help, but how does one help an oppressor?’ ‘By hindering him doing wrong,’ he said.” Islam. Hadith of Bukhari
“Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die, says the Lord God, and not rather that he should return from his ways and live?” Judaism. Ezekiel 18.23.
“A superior being does not render evil for evil; this is a maxim one should observe; the ornament of virtuous persons is their conduct. One should never harm the wicked or the good or even criminals meriting death. A noble soul will ever exercise compassion even toward those who enjoy injuring others or those of cruel deeds when they are actually committing them—for who is without fault?” Hinduism. Ramayana, Yuddha Kanda 115
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven, for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.” Christianity. Matthew 5.43.
“It may be that God will ordain love between you and those whom you hold as enemies. For God has power over all things; and God is Oft-forgiving. Most Merciful.” Islam. Qur’an 60.7
“Brethren, if outsiders should speak against me, or against the Doctrine, or against the Order, you should not on that account either bear malice, or suffer resentment, or feel ill will. If you, on that account, should feel angry and hurt, that would stand in the way of your own self-conquest.” Buddhism. Digha Nikaya i.3.
“Says Nanak, ‘True lovers are those who are forever absorbed in the Beloved. Whoever discriminates between treatment that is held good or bad, is not a true lover—he rather is caught in calculations.’ ” Sikhism. Adi Granth, Asa-ki-Var, M.2, p 474.
“May love triumph over contempt, May the true-spoken word triumph over the false-spoken word, May truth triumph over falsehood.” Zoroastrianism. Yasna 60.5
“Man should subvert anger by forgiveness, subdue pride by modesty, overcome hypocrisy with simplicity, and greed by contentment.” Jainism. Samanasuttam 136.
“Father forgive them, they know not what they do.” Jesus
“O God, Almighty and merciful, who healest those that are broken in heart, and turnest the sadness of the sorrowful to joy; Let thy fatherly goodness be upon all that thou hast made. Remember in pity such as are this day destitute, homeless, or forgotten of their fellow-men. Bless the congregation of the poor. Uplift those who are cast down. Mightily befriend innocent sufferers, and sanctify to them the endurance of their wrongs. Cheer with hope all discouraged and unhappy people, and by thy heavenly grace preserve from falling those whose penury tempteth them to sin; though they be troubled on every side, suffer them not to be distressed; though they be perplexed, save them from despair…” Christian. From the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer.
“If hell is the wasteland, then purgatory would be the journey where you leave the place of pain….You really do not have a sacred place, a rescue land, until you can find some little field of action, or place to be, where it’s not a wasteland, where there is a little spring of ambrosia. It’s a joy that comes from inside. It is not something that puts the joy in you, but a place that lets you so experience your own will, your own intention, and your own wish that, in small, the joy is there. The sin against the Holy Ghost, I think, is despair. The Holy Ghost is that which inspires you to realization, and despair is the feeling that nothing can come. That is absolute hell. Find a place where there’s joy, and the joy will burn out the pain.” Joseph Campbell.
“Compassion for me is just what the word says; it is ‘suffering with.’ It is an immediate participation in the suffering of another to such a degree that you forget yourself and your own safety and spontaneously do what is necessary.” Joseph Campbell
“What sort of religion can it be without compassion? You need to show compassion to all living beings. Compassion is the root of all religious faiths.” Hinduism. Basavaana, Vacana 247
“When a person responds to the joys and sorrows of others as if they were his own, he has attained the highest state of spiritual union.” Hinduism. Bhagavad Gita 6.28-32
“The Holy Spirit is a compassionate outpouring of the Creator and the Son.” Christian mystic Mechtild of Magdeburg
“Compassion is the sometimes fatal capacity for feeling what it is like inside somebody else’s skin. It is the knowledge that there can never really be any peace and joy for me until there is peace and joy finally for you too.” Protestant minister Frederick Buechner
“O good man! One who acts good is the ‘true thinking.” The true thinking is compassion. Compassion is the Tathagata. Compassion is the bodhi path; the bodhi path is the Tathagata. The Tathagata is compassion. Compassion is the great Brahma. Great Brahma is compassion. Compassion is the Tathagata. Compassion acts as parent to all beings. The parent is compassion. Compassion is the Tathagata. Compassion is the Buddha nature of all beings. Such a Buddha nature is long overshadowed by illusion. That is why beings cannot see. The Buddha nature is compassion. Compassion is the Tathagata. “ Buddhism. Mahaparinivana Sutra 259
“Compassion is a mind that savors only mercy and love for all sentient beings. “ Buddhism. Nagarjuna, Precious Garland 437
“Make your mosque of compassion, your prayer mat of sincerity; your Qur’an of honest and legitimate earning. Be modest in your circumcision, noble conduct your Ramadan fast—Thus shall you be a true Muslin.” Sikhism. Adi Granth, Var Majh, M. I. p. 140
“At times I think the truest image of God today is a black inner-city grandmother in the US or a mother of at the disappeared in Argentina or the women who wake up early to make tortillas in refugee camps. They all weep for their children and in their compassionate tears arises the political action that changes the world. The mothers show us that it is the experience of touching the pain of others that is the key to change.” Protestant Jim Wallis, founding editor of Sojourners magazine.