Quotes About Empathy

We wouldn't spend so much time worrying about what other people think of us if we realized how seldom they do.

I don't have a hostile disposition toward humankind per se. In fact, I feel quite warmly toward humankind. It's individual humans I have trouble with.

So, yes, we need to reject the core evolutionary value of the specialness of self. Indeed, there's probably never been a time in human history when this rejection was more vital.

In one of her last works, The Need for Roots, she wrote: "There exists an obligation towards every human being for the sole reason that he or she is a human being, without any other condition requiring to be fulfilled, and even without any recognition of such obligation on the part of the individual concerned.

There are too many people, and too few human beings.

Será que a veces hay que callar, no por miedo ni menos por pudor, sino por compasión?

Ahora mismo, yo me pregunto, mirándote: ¿Con qué ojos mira una mujer a un hombre? Eso es lo que nunca sabremos. ¿No te parece? Vos para mí eras un desgraciado, al que de un revés se lo saca uno de adelante. Pero para ella, ¿quién eras vos? Ese es el punto oscuro. ¿Lo supiste alguna vez? Decíme francamente: ¿supiste vos en tu corazón qué hombre eras para tu mujer? ¿Qué es lo que ella vio en vos para sufrir tanto a tu lado, y soportarte como lo hizo?

Porque se decía que si el «millonario melancólico y taciturno» veía que él le miraba el trasero a las criadas, deduciría de ello que no estaba tan preocupado como para merecer su compasión. Tan es así, que Erdosain esperaba que el «millonario melancólico y taciturno» lo mandara llamar de un momento a otro al observar su semblante de músculos endurecidos por el sufrimiento de tantos años.

Without forgiveness life is governed by an endless cycle of resentment and retaliation.

They could read him, they could study him, they could pick him apart, but they couldn't laugh or be sad with him....

You have to listen to women. You should never ignore a woman's fears.

Uno tiene que conocer gente de todas las clases, a veces es necesario empaparse de realidad

We're two of a kind, that donkey and me, said Caridad in a dreamy voice. Foreigners in our own land. I would have liked to tell her she was wrong, to point out that in the eyes of the law, I was the only foreigner, but I kept my mouth shut. I put my arm gently around her waist and waited. Caridad might have been foreign to God, to the police and even to herself, but she wasn't foreign to me. I could have said the same for the donkey.

We had contributed. So had his mother and all the other black mothers who wept at night and saw visions of the gates of hell when they should have been asleep.

Ulazim u njihove snove. Ulazim u njihove najsramnije misli, u svakom sam drhtaju, u svakom gr?u njihovih duša, uvla?im se u njihova srca, ispipavam njihove najtemeljnije predodžbe, motrim njihove bezumne porive, njihova neizraziva ?uvstva, spavam u njihovim plu?ima ljeti i u njihovim miši?ima zimi, i sve to ?inim bez i najmanjeg napora, ne zahtijevaju?i to, ne mole?i ni traže?i, bez ikakve prisile, nagnan samo predanoš?u i ljubavlju.

I prefer to not say anything, she wrote, there's no point adding to the pain, or adding our own little mysteries to it. As if the pain itself were not enough of a mystery, as if the pain were not the (mysterious) answer to all mysteries.

A woman who took care of everyone, except herself, and she begins to fade away in our arms. And even then we don't realize

Madness really is contagious, and friends are a blessing, especially when you're on your own.

It's as if you were giving me a part of you," said Vanessa.

I know you'll forgive my eccentricities, she said, after all we both read poetry.

pain is our only connection with life; only pain can reveal what life is.

For a moment I thought he was going to cry, but suddenly, before he said anything, I realized that I'd be the one who cried, that inevitably, it would be me who cried.

She had none of the attributes of the ambitious. When she suffered, her pain was clearly visible, and when she was happy, the happiness she felt was contagious. She was incapable of setting herself a goal and striving steadily toward it. At least, no goal was appealing or desirable enough for her to pursue it unreservedly. Used in a personal sense, the phrase "achieve an end" seemed to her a small-minded snare.

I've always been sensitive to the pain of others, always tried to feel a part of everyone else's suffering.