Quotes About Empathy

One does not meet oneself until one catches the reflection from an eye other than human.

I love forms beyond my own, and regret the borders between us

This is the most enormous extension of vision of which life is capable: the projection of itself into other lives. This is the lonely, magnificent power of humanity. It is . . . the supreme epitome of the reaching out.

If women would stand beside each other, rather than be jealous, it'd help a lot.

I hope reading this book made you feel a little closer to her, kind of like she was your friend, too. When you listen to her music, I hope you feel that same closeness, as if she is singing just for you. The truth is, she was.

you know what I see when I look at you

Can I tell that from her ear Axel? No, I can't. Why don't you go sit down somewhere and stop pacing behind me.

Jane started crying, which didn't surprise Ray in the least. The woman had the appearance of a professional watering pot—her

If you decide you have to kill yourself," he said, "in the last second before you act, picture my face. Listen to me giving you one last plea not to do it. And know that someone really cares.

Over and over I had to reassure her. "You hate me," she would say. "Lori, I don't hate you. I love you." Finally it began to dawn on me. When she challenged me like that, she wasn't making a statement. She was asking a question. And she needed to hear the answer. She needed to hear that I still accepted her. She needed to hear that I still cared for her. Over and over again she needed to hear me tell her that I loved her.

Good healthy anger that is blocked can then seem like feral rage. But when you accept it and work with it, it becomes the ability to stand up for yourself.

These people are no better or no worse than people anywhere, anything that you can do to help them, help them and you will be surprised to know how they will help you.

These kids are like vessels you pour your love into. And some of those vessels are big and strong and happy to hold all the love you want to pour in, and others have cracks in them and the love isn't worth much because it all leaks out. I used to think love could save anything, but it can't if the vessel's cracked.

MAMA: You must not dislike people 'cause they well off, honey. BENEATHA: Why not? It makes just as much sense as disliking people 'cause they are poor, and lots of people do that.

When you starts measuring somebody, measure him right, child, measure him right. Make sure you done taken into account what hills and valleys he come through before he got to wherever he is.

Like everyone he knew, he could discern the hollowness in people's charm only when it was directed at someone other than himself.

My new apartment might be a place where there are lots of children. They might gather on my porch to play, and when I step out for groceries, they will ask me, Hi, do you have any kids? and then, Why not, don't you like kids? I like kids, I will explain. I like kids very much. And when I almost run over them with my car, in my driveway, I will feel many different things.

The key to marriage, she concluded, was just not to take the thing too personally.

Like true friends, they take no hardy or elegant stance loosely choreographed from some broad perspective. They get right in there and mutter Jesus Christ! and shake their heads.

To know something you had to be able to go inside and feel, then step outside and look, and then do that again: go inside, feel, then outside and look. You had to do it twice. That was knowledge. Two in a row.

Learn that you have a way of knowing each other which somehow slips out and beyond the ways you have of not knowing each other at all.

If I could not be anchored and profound, I would try, at least, to be kind.

No, I'm not Jewish, she said archly, staring him down, to teach him, to teach him this: Are you? Yes, he said. He studied her eyes. Oh, she said. Not many of us in this part of the world, so I thought I'd ask. Yes. She felt an embarrassed sense of loss, as if something that should have been hers but wasn't had been taken away, legally, by the police.

She knew that the world was not created to speak just to her, and yet, as with her son, sometimes things did.