Compassionate Living Quotes

Whenever somebody challenges me with the notion that killing carrots is no different to killing cows, I make a point of pointing out how different they would feel if they spent the day weeding in the garden, or the day slaughtering chickens. Just to make it clear how ridiculous they are being, because there can be no doubt, their argument is ridiculous, there isn't a person out there who given both scenarios would look at them and say "yes they are the same". I like to state this clearly, because I understand that even if the person challenging me refuses to acknowledge the difference, others who come along later and read the conversation will see both sides to the argument and maybe it will help these new people to not start presenting the same kind of ridiculous logic in opposition towards compassionate living. ~ Mango Wodzak

Selfless, generous, compassionate living is unassailable. ~ Andy Stanley

Pema calls these activities "the six ways of compassionate living": generosity, patience, discipline, exertion, meditation, and prajna, or wisdom. The basis for all these practices is the cultivation of maitri, an unconditional loving-kindness with ourselves that says, "Start where you are." In Buddhist terms, this path is known as bodhisattva activity. Simply put, a bodhisattva is one who aspires to act from an awakened heart. In terms of the Shambhala teachings, it is the path of warriorship. To join these two streams, Pema likes to use the term warrior-bodhisattva, which implies a fresh and forward-moving energy that is willing to enter into suffering for others' benefit. Such action relates to overcoming the self-deception, self-protection, and other habitual reactions that we use to keep ourselves secure - in a prison of concepts. By gently and precisely cutting through these barriers of ego, we develop a direct experience of bodhichitta. ~ Pema Chodron

By compassion we heal our life and the life of others. ~ Amit Ray

I will say this about the upper echelon in France: they know how to spend money. From what I saw living in America, wealth is dedicated to elevating the individual experience. If you're a well-off child, you get a car, or a horse. You go to summer camps that cost as much as college. And everything is monogrammed, personalized, and stamped, to make it that much easier for other people to recognize your net worth.



…The French bourgeois don't pine for yachts or garages with multiple cars. They don't build homes with bowling alleys or spend their weekends trying to meet the quarterly food and beverage limit at their country clubs: they put their savings into a vacation home that all their family can enjoy, and usually it's in France. They buy nice food, they serve nice wine, and they wear the same cashmere sweaters over and over for years. I think the wealthy French feel comfortable with their money because they do not fear it. It's the fearful who put money into houses with even bedrooms and fifteen baths. It's the fearful who drive around in yellow Hummers during high-gas-price months becasue if they're going to lose their money tomorrow, at least other people will know that they are rich today. The French, as with almost all things, privilege privacy and subtlety and they don't feel comfortable with excess. This is why one of their favorite admonishments is tu t'es laisse aller. You've lost control of yourself. You've let yourself go. ~ Courtney Maum

Victory is the thought transformation resulting from comprehending that physical immortality ... perpetual longevity, sans illness and aging ... eternal, healthy, youthful life in your living flesh ... is not a fantasy, but a practical and attainable possibility. ~ Linda Goodman

Living in the past is like owning a television that only shows reruns ~ Raymond C. Nolan

Look back on your life and find those moments of giving. Fill life with those moments; life will be worth living. ~ Debasish Mridha

I have one memory that catches in me like a nasty clump of blood. Marian was dead about two years, and my mother had a cluster of friends over for afternoon drinks. One of them brought a baby. For hours, the child was cooed over, smothered with red-lipstick kisses, tidied up with tissues, then lipstick smacked again. I was supposed to be reading in my room, but I sat at the top of the stairs watching.

My mother finally was handed the baby, and she cuddled it ferociously. Oh, how wonderful it is to hold a baby again! Adora jiggled it on her knee, walked it around the rooms, whispered to it, and I looked down from above like a spiteful little god, the back of my hand placed against my face, imagining how it felt to be cheek to cheek with my mother.

When the ladies went into the kitchen to help tidy up the dishes, something changed. I remember my mother, alone in the living room, staring at the baby almost lasciviously. She pressed her lips hard against the baby's apple slice of a cheek. Then she opened her mouth just slightly, took a tiny bit of flesh between her teeth, and gave it a little bite.

The baby wailed. The blotch faded as Adora snuggled the child, and told the other women it was just being fussy. I ran to Marian's room and got under the covers. ~ Gillian Flynn

If I was writing songs just for me I'd only play them in my living room, alone. ~ Tori Amos

We were not given our unique talents and abilities to earn a living.
They were given to us to create a life. ~ Marilyn Jenett

In this one life, this one life that you have to live, you must embrace every moment that creeps into your existence. You must feel every possible emotion to realize you're really alive, you're really living. If you build walls and you hide behind them in fear, you're not embracing moments, you're not actually living. And if you're not living, then you're dead. Maybe not physically, but mentally and emotionally, you are non-existent. Why would you want to waste such precious time, non-existing, especially behind a crumby wall? Fear? Fear of what? Fear of something great? Fear of something amazing? Hurt? Fear of pain? Isn't pain what makes us appreciate feelings of absolute happiness and love? Who doesn't want happiness? Let me be the one to tell you that this life is short, it's damn short. So, let go of your grudges, your past, your stupid walls and feel reality. Avoidance is not life. Pain is life, happiness is life, emotion is life. Live your damn life. Stop being dead. Embrace every good feeling in your heart and soul and act on it without the fear of hurt, because undoubtedly hurt will happen, but hurt will also disappear and lead to the most valuable feelings in this world. Regret is not something you want to live with in this short, short life. So follow that tiny fist sized drum in your chest because it is honest and it is true. Take those fucking chances, take them knowing this world is full of opportunity, opportunity for great things, absolutely amazing fucking thi ~ Anonymous

We were not having any fun, he had recently begun pointing out. I would take exception (didn't we do this, didn't we do that) but I had also known what he meant. He meant doing things not because we were expected to do them or had always done them or should do them but because we wanted to do them. He meant wanting. He meant living. ~ Joan Didion

If we simply imagined that everyone who crossed our path was living out his or her very last day on Earth, we might treat people as kindly as we ought to each day they lived. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

Names are the way we humans build relationship, not only with each other but with the living world. ~ Robin Wall Kimmerer

She loved him. He loved her. In the absence of understanding, that was as good a reason as any for living together and making babies and raising them up and throwing them out of the house and then going through the long slow decline together until one of them died and left the other alone again, understanding as little as ever about what their spouses really wanted, who they really were. ~ Orson Scott Card

There are mainly four types of living beings: vegetables, parasites, animals and humans. Vegetables go through life without any conscience of what it means to be alive, and all they can do is react to what happens around them and unto them. Parasites take advantage of others beings to survive but cannot survive on their own. In fact, they rather kill their host than to improve themselves independently. Animals are driven by basic instincts, like sex and pleasure for food. Animals can have attachments but that is as far as they go in what concerns love. Now human, they are capable of all that, plus the ability to love on will, to change, help others change, and create any reality they want to experience. However, almost everyone I encounter, is either pretending to be a plant, a parasite or an animal, not a human. Few people know what it means to be human, and that's how the waste their own existence. This said, we wouldn't need to answer questions about life purpose when the purpose is understood in being what one was born to be. ~ Robin Sacredfire

Some people hear the voice of God in their dreams or through prayer or meditation. For me, God is truly in the details - the details found in the connections between the living things on the planet all working together to maintain the atmosphere and the soil. ~ Timothy Goodwin

There is something about this generation living now, that we don't accept death. ~ Elena Anaya

You live. And you throw yourself into everything and try not to think of the bruises. ~ Jojo Moyes

People "died" all the time ... Parts of them died when they made the wrong kinds of decisions-decisions against life. Sometimes they died bit by bit until finally they were just living corpses walking around. If you were perceptive you could see it in their eyes; the fire had gone out ... you always knew when you made a decision against life. The door clicked and you were safe inside-safe and dead. ~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Life always begins with one step outside of your comfort zone. ~ Shannon L. Alder

Living a Christian life is not equivalent to living a religious one ~ Sunday Adelaja

If you personally advocate that I be caged if I don't pay for whatever "government" things YOU want, please don't pretend to be tolerant, or non-violent, or enlightened, or compassionate. Don't pretend you believe in "live and let live," and don't pretend you want peace, freedom or harmony. It's a simple truism that the only people in the world who are willing to "live and let live" are voluntaryists. So you can either PRETEND to care about and respect your fellow man while continuing to advocate widespread authoritarian violence, or you can embrace the concepts of self-ownership and peaceful coexistence, and become an anarchist. ~ Larken Rose

four meta-movements that separately and together are redefining the American dream: living with limits, embracing diversity, looking inward, and demanding authenticity. ~ John Zogby

What wounds a man mortally is living with a woman,
sharing her bed, and knowing he is not loved. Not even
esteemed. Knowing, that in the eyes of the woman he has
chosen above all others, he is nothing. Nothing at all. ~ Germaine Shames

You can't do passion halfway. Living your passion means you're all in. You trust your heart and trust your gut wherever that takes you. ~ Joe Plumeri

Liberals believe that crime is inextricably linked with poverty. In reality, most poor people never resort to crime, and some wealthy people commit evil acts to enrich themselves further. Harlem, East Los Angeles, the South side of Chicago are not the poorest communities in the United States. According to a new U.S. Bureau of the Census report, the poorest communities are Shannon County, South Dakota, followed by Starr, Texas, and Tunica, Mississippi. Have you ever heard of these residents rioting to protest their living conditions? ~ Rush Limbaugh

Dawn couldn't come soon enough. He had to get her out of his life as quickly as
possible. It was becoming the most important thing - more important than breathing, living. He needed to get away from her, fast. Because he didn't want to let her go. ~ Anne Stuart

But the problem with entitlement is that it makes people need to feel good about themselves all the time, even at the expense of those around them. And because entitled people always need to feel good about themselves, they end up spending most of their time thinking about themselves. After all, it takes a lot of energy and work to convince yourself that your shit doesn't stink, especially when you've actually been living in a toilet. Once ~ Mark Manson

The story tells us that living the life of an artist is not as useful as living our lives as a work of art. ~ Martin Prechtel

Our souls set us apart from every other living creature, and that makes us unique. It also makes us fully human. ~ Billy Graham

Every year white people add 100 years to how long ago slavery was. I've heard educated white people say, 'slavery was 400 years ago.' No it very wasn't. It was 140 years ago ... that's two 70-year-old ladies living and dying back to back. That's how recently you could buy a guy. ~ Louis C.K.

I've spent a lot of years living with normal people. If I take a private jet to go to a meeting in Milan, well, that's my business; I can do it. But I don't live for it. ~ Brunello Cucinelli

Tektology was the first attempt in the history of science to arrive at a systematic formulation of the principles of organization operating in living and nonliving systems. ~ Fritjof Capra

Struggle! To struggle is to live, and the fiercer the struggle the intenser the life. Then you will have lived; and a few hours of such life are worth years spent vegetating. ~ Pyotr Kropotkin

The boiling water that does not cool down only dries out! ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Why does Anna Karenina kill herself? the answer seems clear enough: for years people in her world have turned away from her; she is suffering at the separation from her son, Seryozha; even if Vronsky still loves her, she fears for that love; she is exhausted with it, overexcited, unwholesomely (and unjustly) jealous; she feels trapped. Yes, all that is clear; but is a trapped person necessarily doomed to suicide? So many people adapt to living in a trap! Even if we understand the depth of her sorrow, Anna's suicide remains an enigma. ~ Milan Kundera

But it was something else too, MacFarlane said. It was a denial, but it was also the truth. Peter really did not know who Jesus was, did not really know, and neither do any of us really know who Jesus is either. Beyond all we can find to say about him and believe about him, he remains always beyond our grasp, except maybe once in a while the hem of his garment. We should never forget that. We can love him, we can learn from him, but we can come to know him only by following him - by searching for him in his church, in his Gospels, in each other. That was the sermon I heard anyway, and I remember thinking that if it were not for all the reasons I have for living where I do, I could imagine moving a thousand miles just to be near where I could hear truth spoken like that. ~ Frederick Buechner

Enjoy the present, bid defiance to the future, laugh at all those reasonable beings who exercise their reason to avoid the misfortunes which they fear, destroying at the same time the pleasure that they might enjoy. ~ Giacomo Casanova