Quotes About Empathy

I was crying on the back-porch swing. You came out with a corsage of fresh forget-me-nots and roses, and a handkerchief. You told me any guy worth my time would always come to me with flowers and a handkerchief. One to make me smile, and the other to dry my tears, because a smart guy knows women need to cry as much as they need to laugh.

Accepting what people are, what they can't change and loving them with every part of yourself anyway. That's what love is about." He glared at Elaine. "You take that away from him, you make him believe that kind of love doesn't exist…It would be better for you to shoot him rather than destroy him inch by inch, year after year. If you do that, you're not saving his soul, you're killing it. If you'd look into his eyes for once, you'll see it. How we love is our soul.

You really do unique small talk," she said as he caught up to her, walked side by side. "Well, these things keep a conversation well lubricated. Only thing worse than a dry fuck is small talk.

If you let me into your soul, let yourself be inside mine, you'll always see me more clearly than anyone.

I know, sweetheart. I wish I could take away your fear, but the only way I know to do it is to help you face it. I'd face it for you if I could.

Peter knew she was afraid. He ached to tell her that she didn't have to do anything, that he'd protect her from everything. Every instance of fear or pain she had tore him apart inside. She'd had months, but it was still new to him. He wanted to grieve with her for what she'd lost, let her know the utter terror he'd felt at the idea of her being gone from his life before she'd really fully entered it.

You stand in my soul; I stand in yours. That's the room we always share, no matter where we are.

It's never going to be that way with us. Anything you say "stop" about, I respect. No apologies, no guilt on your part, no feeling like you've disappointed me. I want you to feel comfortable saying it. You want to get out of here now?.

Only thing worse than a dry fuck is small talk.

Tell him... You think it's kinder not to, but it isn't.

It was a tough night," Marcus said briefly, another humorless smile crossing his mouth. "But they got what they paid for." "Jesus," Thomas murmured. Marcus slanted a glance at him, and his green eyes were hard, brittle. "Don't think about it, pet. I don't. No one who lives it dwells on this fucking stuff. You just thank God or your own balls for getting yourself through it, pulling yourself up into something better. The day I see pity in your face, I want your fucking ass out of my life.

You'll need to take it easy on him, Tyler. He comes off tough as nails, but if you find the way in, he can be hurt. We all can, love. We all can.

The world is so empty if one thinks only of mountains, rivers and cities, but to know that there is someone who, though distant, thinks and feels with us -- this makes the earth for us an inhabited garden.

Trpljenje patnikâ nije ništa veliko ni uzvišeno; u svome korijenu ono je sve drugo samo ne solidarno trpljenje, ono nije naprosto znak ljubavi, nego je daleko više naznaka za to da se više ne može ljubiti.

If you want to know yourself,Just look how others do it;If you want to understand others,Look into your own heart.

Never suffer the prejudice of the eye to determine the heart.

Loneliness isn't the physical absence of other people, he said—it's the sense that you're not sharing anything that matters with anyone else. If you have lots of people around you—perhaps even a husband or wife, or a family, or a busy workplace—but you don't share anything that matters with them, then you'll still be lonely.

punishment—shaming a person, caging them, making them unemployable—traps them in addiction. Taking that money and spending it instead on helping them to get jobs and homes and decent lives makes it possible for many of them to stop.

The more novels you read, the better you were at reading other people's emotions. It was a huge effect. This wasn't just a sign that you were better educated—because reading nonfiction books, by contrast, had no effect on your empathy.

Your working assumption, when you meet a homophobe, should be that they are gay.

How do we start to rebuild a society where we don't feel so alone and afraid, and where we can form healthier bonds? How do we build a society where we look for happiness in one another rather than in consumption?

Every one of the social and psychological causes of depression and anxiety they have discovered has something in common. They are all forms of disconnection. They are all ways in which we have been cut off from something we innately need but seem to have lost along the way.

If you see the world through fragments, your empathy often doesn't kick in, in the way that it does when you engage with something in a sustained, focused way.

Being deeply lonely seemed to cause as much stress as being punched by a stranger.