Quotes About Empathy

After he finishes his song, I ask him, "Sir, were you just playing 'Lean on Me'?" "That's right!" he answers, thrilled. Now, whenever I think of Mudd and his house I hear that song, hear Mudd serenading the limping Booth, taking his arm and helping him up the stairs, singing, "Lean on me, when you're not strong, and I'll be your friend.

Mutual Criticism required a member of the group to stand up in front of everybody and listen to the enumeration of his or her faults. The bright side of being that night's subject for criticism was the rare treat at Oneida of being the center of attention. The downside was that everyone you knew and loved was allowed, even encouraged, to look into your eyes and ask, "You know what your problem is?

Abraham Lincoln had a soft spot for deserters, whom he called his "legs cases." Though many of his military commanders grumbled about Lincoln's leniency — traditionally, runaways were shot — the president preferred incarceration to execution, asking, "If Almighty God gives a man a cowardly pair of legs how can he help their running away with him?

One of the advantages to visiting historic sites as opposed to merely reading about them is the endearing glow of hometown pride.

the cheapest, most pleasurable way for a country of strangers to get to know each other and the rest of the world is through reading.

United States . . . gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.

Winning is not always about shining the brightest. Sometimes it's about sharing the light with someone who has been waiting in the shadows all along.

Beauty salons, like churches, are places where people tend to unburden themselves and bare their souls.

Maybe Dillon Samreen will decide to pick on this new kid with the weird name and the funny accent instead of me.

If we are all going to have tragedies, if none of us can escape them, then surely we have to learn from them, we have to gain something. And we have to use what we have gained. Those of us who have fought tooth and nail to overcome tragedy are, after all, nothing else, proof that such things can be survived. So we can actually help others survive their tragedies too. As long as they'll let us.

It simply had never occurred to Annie during all her years of child-rearing that terrible things would not happen to her children just because she would not do terrible things to anyone else's.

You do not need to worry about being sure right now,' she said. 'You need to laugh, that is all. Just laugh. We will help you.

If I were in their place, I'd fall over myself.

Hell is other people

it was odd, he thought, that a man could hate himself as though he were someone else.

Love thy neighbor as thyself because you are your neighbor. It is illusion that makes you think that your neighbor is someone other than yourself.

We must realize that violence is not confined to physical violence. Fear is violence, caste discrimination is violence, exploitation of others, however subtle, is violence, segregation is violence, thinking ill of others and condemning others are violence. In order to reduce individual acts of physical violence, we must work to eliminate violence at all levels, mental, verbal, personal, and social, including violence to animals, plants, and all other forms of life.

Whatever lessens suffering in yourself and others, that is right. Whatever increases suffering, that is wrong. The answer is within you. When you are free of pride and prejudice, when you are calm and attentive, a light will shine within you. Through meditation and through being mindful you will find your own knowledge of rightness. You will be your own light.

Whatever lessens suffering in yourself and others, that is right. Whatever increases suffering, that is wrong.

We are human beings first and last. Our religion is faith in Humanity - and there can be no religion greater than that.

And what about all the good I have in my heart—doesn't it mean anything?

To know how it feels to be a seaweed you have to get in the water.

A good man can bear to listen to another talk about himself.

But when he sat down for a moment on the bed, all the comedy of it was snatched away and torn to pieces. He was wrong about the woman's expression: he was trying to transform it into something he could bear. The truth was probably far different. He had started out to see what had happened with her eyes and had ended by substituting his own, thus contriving to put her on his side.