Quotes About Empathy

Resentment, hatred, ill will, and hostility are behind a host of maladies. Forgive yourself and everybody else by pouring out love, life, joy, and good will to all those who have hurt you. Continue until such time as you meet them in your mind and you are at peace with them.

Wish for the other what you wish for yourself. This is the key to harmonious human relations.

Do not ever try and deprive another of any joy. If you do, you deprive yourself. When the ship comes in for your friend, it comes in for you also.

The quickest way to cause wealth to take wings to fly away is to criticize or condemn others who have more money than you.

All you owe any person in the world is love, and love is wishing for everyone what you wish for yourself—health, happiness, and all the blessings of life.

Without an accepting and kind attitude toward ourselves, it's difficult to be caring and compassionate for others.

The fact that you are feeling unhappy does not entitle you to inflict your bad mood on others.

The question of bread for myself is a material question, but the question of bread for my neighbor is a spiritual question.

As the former British chief rabbi Jonathan Sacks has expressed it: "If the Nazis searched out every Jew in hate, the Rebbe wished to search out every Jew in love.

Only God can give us credit for the angry words we did not speak. —Rabbi Harold Kushner, When All You've Ever Wanted Isn't Enough, page 187

Never use damaging personal information to invalidate your adversary and, by implication, his contentions. ... If you watch your words when you fight, the issue can usually be resolved.

We all understand in theory that we should be able to love and respect those with whom we disagree, but few of us can do so. Often, people end up concluding that there is something deficient either in the intelligence or character of those with whom they disagree. Quite characteristically, this is what liberals and conservatives commonly think of each other, that their opponent has something wrong either with his head or his heart.

No matter who we are, no matter what our circumstances, our feelings and emotions are universal.

Gay men know that the way to a woman's heart is through her son.

Do not underestimate the role you may play in clearing the obstacles in someone's spiritual journey.

It is really irritating to work with irritating people

The ones who fight each other because of their own beliefs are like specks of dirt fighting each other about the nature of their world, refusing to see that they are all in the same mud puddle on the side of the road.

The inclination to exchange thoughts with one another is probably an original impulse of our nature. If I be in pain I wish to let you know it, and to ask your sympathy and assistance; and my pleasurable emotions also, I wish to communicate to, and share with you. —ABRAHAM LINCOLN, February 11, 1859

Why do we have two ears and one mouth? In order to talk half as much as we listen.

When I say, 'I love you,' it's not because I want you or because I can't have you. It has nothing to do with me. I love what you are, what you do, how you try. I've seen your kindness and your strength. I've seen the best and the worst of you. And I understand with perfect clarity exactly what you are. You're a hell of a person.

You know what? I was wrong. You are an idiot. My life happens to, on occasion, suck beyond the telling of it. Sometimes more than I can handle. And it's not just mine. Every single person down there is ignoring your pain because they're too busy with their own. The beautiful ones. The popular ones. The guys that pick on you. Everyone. If you could hear what they were feeling. The loneliness. The confusion. It looks quiet down there. It's not. It's deafening.

When people say to me, 'Why are you so good at writing at women?' I say, 'Why isn't everybody?' Obviously there are differences between men and women - that's what makes it all fun. But we're all people. There's a lot of good writers who are very humanist, but still manage to kind of skip fifty-five per cent of the race. And I just don't get that. Not to be able to write an entire gender? To me, the question isn't how do you do it? It's how can you possibly avoid doing it?

To forgive is an act of compassion... It's not done because people deserve it. It's done because they need it.

Try taking a stand on just one leg. You need to see both sides.