Compassion

[Bruce]

What matters is that you understand that others suffer, some worse than you could ever do. The nature of compassion isn't coming to terms with your own suffering and applying it to others: it's knowing that other folks around you suffer and, no matter what happens to you, no matter how lucky or unlucky you are, they keep suffering. And if you can do something about that, you do it, and you do it without whining or waving your own cross for the world to see. You do it because it's the right thing to do.

From Dark Hollow by John Connolly