Short Inspirational Quotes | Inspirational Life Quotes | Inspirational Love Quotes | Links | About

Pema Chodron Quotes and Sayings
Quotes by Pema Chodron

Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded.
It's a relationship between equals.
Only when we know our own darkness well
can we be present with the darkness of others.
Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.
- Pema Chodron

Related topics: Inspirational Life Human-Nature Psychology Buddhist Compassion

The only reason we don't open our hearts and minds to other people
is that they trigger confusion in us
that we don't feel brave enough or sane enough to deal with.
To the degree that we look clearly and compassionately at ourselves,
we feel confident and fearless about looking into someone else's eyes.
- Pema Chodron

Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.
- Pema Chodron

At the root of all the harm we cause is ignorance.
- Pema Chodron

Please sign-up for my Free Inspirational Daily Email on the form below.

Compassion Quotes and Sayings

If we have no peace,
it is because we have forgotten
that we belong to each other.
- Mother Teresa

People will forget what you said,
people will forget what you did,
but people will never forget
how you made them feel.
- Maya Angelou

Give me your tired, your poor,
your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.
- written on the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor

 

You may call God love, you may call God goodness.
But the best name for God is compassion.
- Meister Eckhart

Once you know yourself as a genuine seeker,
and when your own inner chamber is quite enlightened,
then comes the natural unfoldment of pure love and compassion
and a genuine desire to serve others.
- Rod Stryker

Our compassion and acts of selflessness
take us to the deeper truths.
- Amma

For some of us, the world appears to provide
only a fixed quantity of each resource -
a limited amount of food, of money,
of love, of success, of appreciation.
For others, life is unlimited.
Their world expands with the generosity, compassion,
inventiveness, and service that they contribute.
In this world-view, money that is spent
or given away returns multiplied.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Whether one believes in a religion or not,
and whether one believes in rebirth or not,
there isn't anyone who doesn't
appreciate kindness and compassion.
- Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama

A generous heart, kind speech,
and a life of service and compassion
are the things which renew humanity.
- The Buddha

If you want others to be happy, practice compassion.
If you want to be happy, practice compassion.
- Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama

Our prime purpose in this life is to help others.
And if you can't help them, at least don't hurt them.
- Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama

To know even one life has
breathed easier because you have lived.
This is to have succeeded.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

We are formed and molded by our thoughts.
Those whose minds are shaped by selfless thoughts
give joy when they speak or act.
Joy follows them like a shadow that never leaves them.
- The Buddha

One of the sanest, surest, and most generous joys of life
comes from being happy over the good fortune of others.
- Robert A. Heinlein

The brightest stars are those who
shine for the benefit of others.
- Anonymous

Be gentle first with yourself -
if you wish to be gentle with others.
- Lama Yeshe

No one can find inner peace except by working,
not in a self-centered way, but for the whole human family.
- Peace Pilgrim

I Receive ALL of Life with Thanksgiving -
I have gratitude for EVERYTHING
that has ever occurred to bring me to this moment.
I give thanks for the joys and the sufferings,
the moments of peace and the flashes of anger,
the compassion and the indifference,
the roar of my courage and the cold sweat of my fear.
I accept gratefully the entirety of my past and my present life.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

A man is truly ethical only when he obeys
the compulsion to help all life which he is able to assist,
and shrinks from injuring anything that lives.
- Albert Schweitzer

The smallest act of kindness
is worth more than the grandest intention.
- Oscar Wilde

Nobody cares how much you know,
until they know how much you care.
- attributed to Theodore Roosevelt, among others,
but probably earlier and anonymous

The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was:
"If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?"
But... the good Samaritan reversed the question:
"If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?"
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Be gentle first with yourself.
- Lama Yeshe

Too often we underestimate the power of a touch,
a smile, a kind word, a listening ear,
an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring,
all of which have the potential to turn a life around.
- Leo Buscaglia

We cause ourselves untold misery whenever we believe
others to be imperfect and try to change them.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

The value of a man should be seen in what he gives
and not in what he is able to receive.
- Albert Einstein

Love is the absence of judgment.
- Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama

One can not reflect in streaming water.
Only those who know internal peace can give it to others.
- Lao Tzu

With courage, you will dare to take risks,
have the strength to be compassionate,
and the wisdom to be humble.
Courage is the foundation of integrity.
- Keshavan Nair

When will our consciences grow so tender
that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?
- Eleanor Roosevelt

What do we live for, if it is not
to make life less difficult for each other?
- George Eliot

No one has ever become poor by giving.
- Anne Frank

Whatever you say, say with kindness.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

If in our daily life we can smile,
if we can be peaceful and happy,
not only we, but everyone will profit from it.
This is the most basic kind of peace work.
- Thich Nhat Hanh

A part of kindness consists in loving people more than they deserve.
- Joseph Joubert

We receive this food in gratitude to all beings
Who have helped to bring it to our table,
And vow to respond in turn to those in need
With wisdom and compassion.
- Buddhist Blessing

The vast Cathedral of Your Being
becomes sanctuary for all creation
as you celebrate the universal sacraments
of compassion and joy.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men
who walked through the huts comforting others,
giving away their last piece of bread...
They offer sufficient proof that everything
can be taken from a man but one thing:
to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances,
to choose one's own way.
- Viktor E. Frankl

We must use time wisely and forever realize
that the time is always ripe to do right.
- Nelson Mandela

The happiness of one's own heart alone
cannot satisfy the soul;
one must try to include,
as necessary to one's own happiness,
the happiness of others.
- Paramahansa Yogananda

The worst sin toward our fellow creatures
is not to hate them,
but to be indifferent to them:
that's the essence of inhumanity.
- George Bernard Shaw

Don't let a little dispute injure a great relationship.
- Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama

We can live without religion and meditation,
but we cannot survive without human affection.
- Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama

If there is anything that a man can do well,
I say let him do it. Give him a chance.
- Abraham Lincoln

Life is an exciting business,
and most exciting when it is lived for others.
- Helen Keller

We ourselves feel that what we are doing
is just a drop in the ocean.
But the ocean would be less
because of that missing drop.
- Mother Teresa

Where there is charity and wisdom,
there is neither fear nor ignorance.
- St. Francis of Assisi

If you wish to experience peace,
provide peace for another.
- Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama

Deal with the faults of others as gently as with your own.
- Chinese proverb

You can't live a perfect day without doing something
for someone who will never be able to repay you.
- John Wooden

Your worst enemy cannot harm you as much as
your own unguarded thoughts.
- The Buddha

Kind words can be short and easy to speak,
but their echoes are truly endless.
- Mother Teresa

Wherever a man turns he can find someone who needs him.
- Albert Schweitzer

Nurturing is not complex.
It's simply being tuned in to the thing or person before you
and offering small gestures toward what it needs at that time.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

Through violence, you may 'solve' one problem,
but you sow the seeds for another.
- Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama

The biggest disease today is not leprosy or tuberculosis,
but rather the feeling of being unwanted.
- Mother Teresa

No one is to be called an enemy,
all are your benefactors, and no one does you harm.
You have no enemy except yourselves.
- St. Francis of Assisi

The best way to cheer yourself
is to try to cheer someone else up.
- Mark Twain

The more we care for the happiness of others,
the greater is our own sense of well-being.
- Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama

Let us touch the dying, the poor,
the lonely and the unwanted
according to the graces we have received
and let us not be ashamed
or slow to do the humble work.
- Mother Teresa

When we do the best that we can,
we never know what miracle is wrought in our life,
or in the life of another.
- Helen Keller

It is easy enough to be friendly to one's friends.
But to befriend the one who regards himself as your enemy
is the quintessence of true religion.
The other is mere business.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

Great people are those who make others feel
that they, too, can become great.
- Mark Twain

I teach one thing and one only:
that is, suffering and the end of suffering.
- The Buddha

I have found that among its other benefits,
giving liberates the soul of the giver.
- Maya Angelou

When we quit thinking primarily about ourselves
and our own self-preservation,
we undergo a truly heroic transformation of consciousness.
- Joseph Campbell

You cannot do a kindness too soon,
for you never know how soon it will be too late.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Be kind whenever possible; and it is always possible.
- Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama

---

Thank you for visiting these inspiring quotes. See more Inspirational Quotes.