Quotes About Empathy

Despite its evils, bitterness holds many of us captive. Forgiveness is the only escape route out of this prison.

Going beyond forgiveness is sometimes more difficult than the initial act of forgiving.

Not only are many neighborhood conflicts characterized by this insult-for-insult relationship, but many marriages, unfortunately, fall into the same trap. In the chapter on unconditional acceptance, I suggested an exercise in which you divide a sheet of paper into 2 columns and then note your mate's weaknesses in the right-hand column.

I encourage you to do this exercise. Do it now. Get out a piece of paper and make your (2) columns. List your husband's faults and as many of your wrong responses as you can think of. You'll be surprised that your responses are as bad or worse than his faults. After you have finished, confess your wrong attitudes to God and burn the paper. Definitely do not show it to your husband. This exercise is for your benefit - to help you get the plank out of your own eye!

Sometimes what is most important to us is not obvious and can be seen only by how we respond to our husbands in everyday life.

Do I like living with Daniel's family? No. Would I ever tell him that? No. I know I'm all about honesty and saying what I think, but sometimes people are more important than the truth.

I have discovered that love and empathy play side by side with anger, fear, and resentment.

how do we learn to accept and forgive those who have both succeeded and failed in helping us become who we are?

Some people see scars, and it is wounding they remember. To me they are proof of the fact that there is healing.

A woman once described a friend of hers as being such a keen listener that even the trees leaned toward her, as if they were speaking their innermost secrets into her listening ears. Over the years I've envisioned that woman's silence, a hearing full and open enough that the world told her its stories. The green leaves turned toward her, whispering tales of soft breezes and the murmurs of leaf against leaf.

I have a rule: Walk out, crawl back. If a man does the first, then he has to do the second to get back on good terms with me.

Nice is good. It doesn't sound exciting, but think about it. I think Mr. Perfect would be kind to kids and animals, help old ladies across the street, not insult you when your opinion is different from his. Being nice is so important it's close to being number one.

Love by itself isn't enough; it's never enough. There had to be other things, such as liking and respect, or love would get worn away by the realities of everyday life.

He was a man who evidently felt very little; she was a woman who felt, perhaps, too much.

He was a man. He should have acted more like one - thought about how all that self-indulgence might affect his daughter, if not his wife.

Steven longed to comfort her, but he didn't dare. After all, he'd practically called her a prostitute earlier, albeit by mistake, and despite the sponge bath he figured he most likely smelled like a mule fart.

Mind you don't fall in love with him, Emma. I've got Fairfax pegged for a good man, but I suspect you're right in thinking he's in some kind of trouble. I won't have you caught in the middle of somebody else's fight." Emma

Dare to be a force of good in a world of bad.

A mistake made with good in your heart is still a mistake, but it is one for which you must forgive yourself.

If he were older and stronger, would he have given water to those men? Or would he, like most of the group, have kept his water for himself?

Let's get one thing clear between us, Shiloh. I would never laugh at you. I might tease the dickens out of you, but I would never, ever make fun of you. That's not who I am. I don't believe in humiliating another person. It's not in my DNA.

Nothing can fix a broken heart except love. Love always repairs those fractures we get in our heart.

Giving him a wry look, Shiloh said, "I think you're forcing me to look at myself, what I want, who I am." "Good relationships always do that for both people, Darlin'. It's just a natural progression between them. It can bring out our self-awareness. It's not easy. But it's rewarding.

Falco readers are, I must say, the most strikingly nice group of people.