No deep and strong feeling, such as we may come across here and there in the world, is unmixed with compassion. Boris Pasternak

Reason guides our attempt to understand the world about us. Both reason and compassion guide our efforts to apply that knowledge ethically, to understand other people, and have ethical relationships with other people. Molleen Matsumura

Saving lives is not a top priority in the halls of power. Being compassionate and concerned about human life can cause a man to lose his job. It can cause a woman not to get the job to begin with. Myriam Miedzian

The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government. Thomas Jefferson

The dew of compassion is a tear. Lord Bryon

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. Norman Cousins

The mind is no match with the heart in persuasion; constitutionality is no match with compassion. Everett M. Dirksen

The value of compassion cannot be over-emphasized. Anyone can criticize. It takes a true believer to be compassionate. No greater burden can be borne by an individual than to know no one cares or understands. Arthur H. Stainback

The wretched have no compassion, they can do good only from strong principles of duty. Samuel Johnson

There is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one's own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels with someone, for someone, a pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echoes. Milan Kundera

Until he extends his circle of compassion to include all living things, man will not himself find peace. Albert Schweitzer

We hand folks over to God's mercy, and show none ourselves. George Eliot

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 may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way. Viktor Frankl