Compassion alone stands apart from the continuous traffic between good and evil proceeding within us.

Hoffer frames the human interior as a restless exchange—impulses, motives, and rationalizations moving back and forth between what we judge “good” and “evil.” In that moral bustle, compassion is presented as uniquely non-transactional: it does not bargain, justify, or seek advantage, but responds directly to another’s suffering. The line suggests that compassion can interrupt self-serving moral accounting and ideological certainty, offering a rare standpoint not captured by inner conflict or by the need to see oneself as righteous. In Hoffer’s broader sensibility, this elevates compassion as a stabilizing ethical force amid the volatility of conscience, resentment, and moral posturing.