Quotes About Empathy

The lonely one offers his hand too quickly to whomever he encounters.

It is impossible to suffer without making someone pay for it; every complaint already contains revenge.

Most people are far too much occupied with themselves to be malicious.

This is the hardest of all: to close the open hand out of love, and keep modest as a giver.

To see others suffer does one good, to make others suffer even more: this is a hard saying but an ancient, mighty, human, all-too-human principle [....] Without cruelty there is no festival.

And if a friend does you wrong, then say: I forgive you what you have done to me; that you have done it to YOURSELF, however--how could I forgive that!

When one has not had a good father, one must create one.

Pity is the most agreeable feeling among those who have little pride and no prospects of great conquests.

Go up close to your friend but do not go over to him! We should respect the enemy that is in our friend

What really raises one's indignation against suffering is not suffering intrinsically, but the senselessness of suffering

What do you consider the most humane? - To spare someone shame. What is the seal of liberation? - To no longer be ashamed in front of oneself.

What else is love but understanding and rejoicing in the fact that another person lives acts and experiences otherwise than we do?

It is intoxicating joy for the sufferer to look away from his suffering and to forget himself.

You shall love beyond yourselves some day! So first, learn to love. And for that you have to drink the bitter cup of your love.

Visiting the sick' is an orgasm of superiority in the contemplation of our neighbor's helplessness

Do I advise you to love thy neighbor? I suggest rather to escape from thy neighbor and to love those who are the farthest away from you. Higher than the love for thy neighbor is the love for the man who is distant and has still to come.

we often refuse to accept an idea merely because the way in which it has been expressed is unsympathetic to us.

He who knows the reader, does nothing for the reader.

It is much more agreeable to offend and later ask forgiveness than to be offended and grant forgiveness. The one who does the former demonstrates his power and then his goodness. The other, if he does not want to be thought inhuman, must forgive; because of this coercion, pleasure in the other's humiliation is slight.

A friend should be a master at guessing and keeping still: you must not want to see everything.

thou great star! what would be thy happiness if thou hadst not those for whom thou shinest!

Love your enemies because they bring out the best in you.

Pity thwarts the whole law of evolution, which is the law of natural selection. It preserves whatever is ripe for destruction;

What really arouses indignation against suffering is not suffering as such but the senselessness of suffering...