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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 loving others enough to say or do what is appropriate from an empowered heart without attachment to the outcome.

Compassion doesn't, of course, mean feeling sorry for people, or pity, which is how the word has become emasculated in a way.

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 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.

This idea of compassion comes to us because we're made in the image of God, who is ultimately the compassionate one.

Developing our sympathetic compassion is not only possible but the only reason for us to be here on earth.

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

Sympathy is one of the principles most widely rooted in our nature: we rejoice to see ourselves reflected in another; and, perversely enough, we sometimes have a secret pleasure in seeing the sin which dwells in ourselves existing under a deformed and monstrous aspect in another.

Sympathy is charming, but it does not make up for pain.