Quotes About Empathy

I have learned over the course of my many years that it is a bad idea, usually, to investigate piteous weeping but always a fine thing to look into a giggle.

I laugh, because he knew what I was thinking, and very few people ever know what I'm thinking.

Sometimes we have to hurt people, in order to keep ourselves whole. We must just do it with love, that's all.

I cannot kill someone, he thought.

When would he ever learn to stop saying "Look" to a man who had no eyes?

You've ruined it now," she said, looking sadly at the crumpled spotted wings in Bethan's outstretched hand. "It deserved to live, and to fly.

Frequently the new ones were damaged. They hobbled on canes or were ill. Sometimes they were disfigured by wounds or simply because they had been born that way. Some were orphans. All of them were welcomed.

I left home at the correct time but when I was riding along near the hatchery, the crew was separating some salmon, I guess I just got distraught, watching them.

That day had changed him. It had changed the entire village. Shaken by the death of a boy they had loved, each person had found ways to be more worthy of the sacrifice he had made. They had become kinder, more careful, more attentive to one another.

It was the helplessness that scared the both of us.

Take pride in your pain," her mother had always told her. "You are stronger than those who have none.

Friends will take care of them. That's what friends do.

It was because someone who was a real friend was having the exact same feelings I was having, about something that was more important to me than anything else. I bet there are people who go through a whole life and never experience that.

A teenage girl wrote that she had been considering suicide until she read The Giver.

I mean, I wish I knew the right things to say to people. Sometimes I seem to just sit there.

Of course they needed to care. It was the meaning of everything. "And

That had day changed him. It had changed the entire village. Shaken by the death of a boy they had loved, each person found ways to be more worthy of the sacrifice he had made. They had become kinder, more careful, more attentive to one another.

You're right," he said. "But then everyone would be burdened and pained. They don't want that. And that's the real reason The Receiver is so vital to them, and so honored. They selected me—and you—to lift that burden from themselves.

I feel a little sorry for him," Jonas said, "even though I don't even know him. I feel sorry for anyone who is in a place where he feels strange and stupid.

It is so good to have friends who understand how there is a time for crying and a time for laughing, and that sometimes the two are very close together. I

Now he understood about animals; and in the moment that the horse turned from the stream and nudged Jonas's shoulder affectionately with its head, he perceived the bonds between animal and human.

Always better, less rude, to talk about things that were the same.

From another: ". . . Jonas was kind of like Jesus because he took the pain for everyone else in the community so they wouldn't have to suffer. And, at the very end of the book, when Jonas and Gabe reached the place that they knew as Elsewhere, you described Elsewhere as if it were heaven.

The Giver continued. "I backed off, gave her more little delights. But everything changed, once she knew about pain. I could see it in her eyes." "She wasn't brave enough?" Jonas suggested. The Giver didn't respond to the question. "She insisted that I continue, that I not spare her. She said it was her duty. And I knew, of course, that she was correct.