A Literary Prescription for

Compassion

For the tender, brave work of turning towards suffering rather than away from it.

Compassion is love with its sleeves rolled up. Where sympathy stands at a distance, compassion moves closer: it turns towards suffering, its own and others’, rather than away. It is what allows us to sit with someone in their pain without rushing to fix or flee it, and it begins, always, with tenderness towards our own wounds first. In a hard and hurried world it is one of the bravest things we can practise. These books and poems are for deepening it, gently, in ourselves.

Books Poetry Quotes & Prose

Books

Prescribed reading

Some of these teach compassion as a practice, beginning with our own suffering, and some are novels that widen the heart towards lives very different from our own. Non-fiction and fiction together, they share one tender conviction: that compassion is the ground of a good life, and that it can be deepened, deliberately, like any other strength.

Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life

Karen Armstrong · 2010

Armstrong offers a wise, practical programme for placing compassion at the heart of daily life, drawing on the wisdom of every major tradition. Clear and deeply humane, it treats compassion not as a feeling but as a discipline we can build. An inspiring, genuinely useful guide for anyone who wants to become a kinder, more open-hearted person.

No Mud, No Lotus

Thich Nhat Hanh · 2014

The beloved Zen teacher shows, gently, that suffering and happiness grow from the same ground, and that compassion begins with learning to hold our own pain with tenderness. Simple and profound, it is balm for a hurting heart. A comforting, wise little book for anyone learning to meet their own suffering, and everyone else’s, with more kindness.

The Places That Scare You

Pema Chödrön · 2001

Chödrön, the beloved Buddhist nun, teaches how to keep the heart open in the hardest moments, and how fear, faced with compassion, becomes the doorway to courage. Warm and bracingly honest, it is a guide to staying soft in a difficult world. A steadying read for anyone who wants to meet pain, theirs and others’, without shutting down.

Cutting for Stone

Abraham Verghese · 2009

Verghese’s sweeping novel of twin brothers, medicine and love in Ethiopia and America is steeped in mercy and the deep compassion of the healer’s art. Rich, moving and beautifully written, it shows compassion in action across a whole life. An absorbing, big-hearted read for anyone drawn to stories of tenderness amid hardship.

Little Bee

Chris Cleave · 2008

Cleave’s powerful novel entwines the lives of a Nigerian refugee girl and a British woman, and asks piercing questions about what we owe one another. Unflinching yet deeply humane, it opens the heart to a life most readers will never know. A moving, unforgettable read that quietly enlarges your compassion for the stranger.

Half of a Yellow Sun

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie · 2006

Adichie’s magnificent novel follows ordinary people caught in the Biafran war, and finds tenderness, love and dignity amid catastrophe. Devastating and profoundly humane, it makes distant suffering intimate and real. A powerful, essential read for anyone who wants their compassion to reach beyond the borders of their own world.

“Grief was the celebration of love by those who could not stop the death.”

Poems about compassion

For a tender heart

from “Anthem for Doomed Youth”

Wilfred Owen, 1917

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
—Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
…What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.

Owen, who died in the trenches at twenty-five, turns his whole art to grief for the young men dying around him, and asks us to truly see them. It is compassion as an act of witness, refusing to let suffering go unmourned. A searing, tender poem that widens the heart towards every life the world treats as expendable.

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from “The Slave Mother”

Frances E. W. Harper, 1854

Heard you that shriek? It rose
So wildly on the air,
It seem’d as if a burden’d heart
Was breaking in despair.
…He is not hers, although she bore
For him a mother’s pains.

Harper, a pioneering African-American poet and abolitionist, forces us to feel the anguish of a mother whose child is torn away, and refuses to let us look past it. It is compassion wielded as conscience. A powerful poem that insists, still, on our tenderness towards the suffering the world would rather we ignore.

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from “Sympathy”

Paul Laurence Dunbar, 1899

I know what the caged bird feels, alas!
…I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,
When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore—
When he beats his bars and he would be free;
It is not a carol of joy or glee,
But a prayer that he sends from his heart’s deep core.

Dunbar writes his way inside the suffering of the caged and unfree, and in doing so teaches the very heart of compassion: to feel, truly, what another feels. It is empathy made into song. A moving, humane poem for anyone learning to hear the meaning behind another’s pain.

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Quotes & Prose

Quotes about compassion to keep

Compassion is the basis of all morality.

Arthur Schopenhauer

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If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.

Dalai Lama

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Have compassion for everyone you meet, even if they don’t want it.

Miller Williams

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Our task must be to widen our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures.

Albert Einstein

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Compassion is just love with its sleeves rolled up. It does not turn away from the hard parts; it moves towards them.

Georgia Clare

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From Georgia

Softening towards suffering

A gentle practice for meeting your own pain with the same tenderness you would offer a friend, and an essay on the quiet, healing power of a compassionate daily practice.

A Self-Compassion Meditation

Guided meditation by Georgia Clare

A gentle guided practice for turning towards your own hurt with warmth rather than judgement, the tenderness from which all compassion for others grows.

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The Benefits of Meditation for Healing

Personal essay by Georgia Clare · The Library

On how a gentle, regular practice softens the heart towards your own suffering, and quietly deepens your compassion for everyone else’s.

Read the Essay →

The 21-Day Meditation Course

Guided Meditation Course · Georgia Clare

Three weeks of short, guided meditations to help you build a calm, steady daily practice, one day at a time.

Start the 21-Day Course →

Questions people ask

Reading for Compassion

Where should I start?

Start with Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life by Karen Armstrong, a wise, practical guide to making compassion the centre of how you live. And if you would rather a story, Cutting for Stone is a sweeping novel steeped in mercy, medicine and love. The poems below are about the tender, difficult work of feeling with those who suffer.

What can I read about compassion?

Books that deepen your capacity for it. No Mud, No Lotus and The Places That Scare You teach compassion for our own suffering as the ground of compassion for others, while novels like Little Bee and Half of a Yellow Sun open the heart to lives very different from our own. Or begin with the poems and the lines to keep further down the page.

Which quotes about compassion are worth keeping?

Quotes worth keeping include “If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.” (Dalai Lama), “Compassion is the basis of all morality.” (Arthur Schopenhauer) and “Too much self-centred attention leads to anxiety; compassion opens the heart.” You will find these and more in the quotes section above.

Can reading really make me more compassionate?

It genuinely can. Compassion begins with imagining your way into another person’s experience, and that is exactly what reading trains us to do, again and again, until the leap becomes second nature. Story by story, the circle of who we can feel for quietly widens. And the wise books on compassion remind us that it begins at home, with tenderness towards our own suffering first.

Compassion

Prescribed reading

For a tender heart

Quotes about compassion to keep

Softening towards suffering

Reading for Compassion

Where should I start?

What can I read about compassion?

Which quotes about compassion are worth keeping?

Can reading really make me more compassionate?

More prescriptions await.