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Compassion may be defined as the capacity to be attentive to the experience of others, to wish the best for others, and to sense what will truly serve others.

Compassion is sometimes the fatal capacity for feeling what it is like to live 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.

The human capacity for compassion is not a reflex that is triggered automatically by the presence of another living thing.

Only choices made in love are compassionate. There are no exceptions. Do you have the courage to act with an empowered heart without attachment to the outcome? If not, you have no ability to give or experience compassion. That is the shocking truth.

Compassion is the key to living outside the confines of your lower self.

No deep and strong feeling, such as we may come across here and there in the world, is unmixed with compassion. The more we love, the more the object of our love seems to us to be a victim.

Developing our capacity for compassion makes it possible for us to help others in a more skillful and effective way. And compassion helps us as well.

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.

As Christians, our compassion is simply a response to the love that God has already shown us.

The individual is capable of both great compassion and great indifference. He has it within his means to nourish the former and outgrow the latter.