Difference between passionate and compassionate

[FrankU]

Hi everybody. First off, thanks to you all who gives explanations and advice. Who can tell me the difference between passionate and compassionate. After reading the dictionary definitions I'd say that passionate is a postive adjective. I mean, it's good if a person is passionate. According to the dictionary, compassionate means 'full of pity' which doesn't sound very positive to me. My question is can compassionate also be used in a positive sense? I have an audio CD on which motivation coach asks his course participants to describe a person they would like to emulate and they say both the words passionate and compassionate. I hope my long winded post makes any sense. If not let me know :)
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[Mister Micawber]

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Actually, compassionate is more generally positive than passionate, as the former means full of pity for others' misfortunes, while passion is mere emotion, and can express a range of qualities/feelings from commitment to a cause to sexual lust.
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Native English teacher at Mister Micawber's