Every time I see documentaries or infomercials about little kids with cancer, I just freak out. It affects me on the highest emotional level… Anytime I think about it, it makes me sadder than anything I can think of.

I don’t like to see animals in pain. That was very uncomfortable to me. I don’t like factory farming. I’m not an advocate for the meat industry.

As a musician and a songwriter, it is an act of the ego to believe that other people might be interested in your point of view. But it is usually an empathetic nature that gets you going in the first place. Music keeps the heart porous in many ways.

He who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men. We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals.

You may be rich, but there is one thing you can’t afford – that is, if you are a good sort – you can’t afford to spend money on your own luxuries while there are people around you wanting the necessaries of life.

I’m not happy all the time, and I wouldn’t want to be because that would make me a shallow person. But I do try to find the good in everybody.

Never speak to an invalid from behind, nor from the door, nor from any distance from him, nor when he is doing anything. The official politeness of servants in these things is so grateful to invalids, that many prefer, without knowing why, having none but servants about them.

We ought to do good to others as simply as a horse runs, or a bee makes honey, or a vine bears grapes season after season without thinking of the grapes it has borne.

The civility which money will purchase, is rarely extended to those who have none.

What I have in common with the character in ‚Truman‘ is this incredible need to please people. I feel like I want to take care of everyone and I also feel this terrible guilt if I am unable to. And I have felt this way ever since all this success started.

This is a wonderful planet, and it is being completely destroyed by people who have too much money and power and no empathy.

I have striven not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them, nor to hate them, but to understand them.

God made and governs the world invisibly, and has commanded us to love and worship him and no other God; to honor our parents and masters, and love our neighbours as ourselves; and to be temperate, just, and peaceable, and to be merciful even to brute beasts.

A bone to the dog is not charity. Charity is the bone shared with the dog, when you are just as hungry as the dog.

Never find fault with the absent.

I believe that every human mind feels pleasure in doing good to another.

If you want to see the true measure of a man, watch how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.

We don’t get to know people when they come to us; we must go to them to find out what they are like.

I believe we are still so innocent. The species are still so innocent that a person who is apt to be murdered believes that the murderer, just before he puts the final wrench on his throat, will have enough compassion to give him one sweet cup of water.

All major religious traditions carry basically the same message, that is love, compassion and forgiveness the important thing is they should be part of our daily lives.

A good thing to remember is somebody’s got it a lot worse than we do.

No matter what message you are about to deliver somewhere, whether it is holding out a hand of friendship, or making clear that you disapprove of something, is the fact that the person sitting across the table is a human being, so the goal is to always establish common ground.

Although the big word on the left is ‚compassion,‘ the big agenda on the left is dependency.

It has always been a mystery to me how men can feel themselves honoured by the humiliation of their fellow beings.

You must live for another if you wish to live for yourself.

I wish every American had an opportunity to sit down, to go to a base, to meet with families, to meet with service members, to sit down with our veterans – because we would think differently about our challenges as individuals.

In order to have friends, you must first be one.

There is always something infinitely mean about other people’s tragedies.

Compassion is the basis of morality.

One likes people much better when they’re battered down by a prodigious siege of misfortune than when they triumph.

We do not judge the people we love.

Talk to a man about himself and he will listen for hours.

Rose Adams is a wonderful Christian woman who cared for my mother, Morrow Coffey Graham, in her last years of life.

In this sad world of ours, sorrow comes to all; and to the young, it comes with bitterest agony because it takes them unawares. I have had experience enough to know what I say.

I don’t join the New Atheists. So, for example, I wouldn’t have the arrogance to lecture some mother who hopes to see her dying child in Heaven – that’s none of my business, ultimately. I won’t lecture her on the philosophy of science.

Forgive me my nonsense, as I also forgive the nonsense of those that think they talk sense.

I’ve never been a jealous person, and I’ve never felt built up by someone else’s failure – that’s a cheap thrill.

Sooner or later we’re all someone’s dog.

The real power of the Buddha was that he had so much love. He saw people trapped in their notions of small separate self, feeling guilty or proud of that self, and he offered revolutionary teachings that resounded like a lion’s roar, like a great rising tide, helping people to wake up and break free from the prison of ignorance.

Love is the ability and willingness to allow those that you care for to be what they choose for themselves without any insistence that they satisfy you.

I gave ‚em a sword. And they stuck it in, and they twisted it with relish. And I guess if I had been in their position, I’d have done the same thing.

Friendship is but another name for an alliance with the follies and the misfortunes of others. Our own share of miseries is sufficient: why enter then as volunteers into those of another?

Charity bestowed upon those who are worthy of it is like good seed sown on a good soil that yields an abundance of fruits. But alms given to those who are yet under the tyrannical yoke of the passions are like seed deposited in a bad soil. The passions of the receiver of the alms choke, as it were, the growth of merits.

See things from the boy’s point of view.

Your own soul is nourished when you are kind; it is destroyed when you are cruel.

I’ve often felt depressed; everyone feels depressed.

There are techniques of Buddhism, such as meditation, that anyone can adopt. And, of course, there are Christian monks and nuns who already use Buddhist methods in order to develop their devotion, compassion, and ability to forgive.

Think occasionally of the suffering of which you spare yourself the sight.

‚Tis not enough to help the feeble up, but to support them after.

The notion that we have even one single veteran living on the streets should be just considered a travesty to all of us.

Compassionate listening is to help the other side suffer less. If we realize that other people are the same people as we are, we are no longer angry at them.

I am certain no one sets out to be cruel, but our treatment of the elderly ill seems to have no philosophy to it. As a society, we should establish whether we have a policy of life at any cost.

Life is relationship, living is relationship. We cannot live if you and I have built a wall around ourselves and just peep over that wall occasionally. Unconsciously, deeply, under the wall, we are related.

Creativity has got to start with humanity and when you’re a human being, you feel, you suffer. You’re gay, you’re sick, you’re nervous or whatever.

If you would judge, understand.

If we want to fight people in the world, we should fight them with pillows – pillows stuffed with food, medicine, music… That would be so much cheaper than bombs.

When we are well, we all have good advice for those who are ill.

The responsibility of tolerance lies with those who have the wider vision.

I’m convinced of this: Good done anywhere is good done everywhere. For a change, start by speaking to people rather than walking by them like they’re stones that don’t matter. As long as you’re breathing, it’s never too late to do some good.

We just cannot worry about ourselves.

When you have enough understanding and compassion in you, then that amount of understanding and compassion will try to express itself in action. And your practice should help you to cultivate more understanding and compassion.