Quotes About Empathy

friend of mine says that every time I judge myself harshly, I draw a drop of blood from my heart. So easy does it!

I think of the great songs that have carried me along, songs I have sung with you, and for you, all over the world—songs that have carried all of us in rough seas as well as tranquil times, songs that have healed our hearts and kept us going. After all these years, I still believe that music can change the world, and as long as there is music, the dreams will never die.

I have found that people want and need to explore this subject in their own lives, that the discussion brings needed relief—to all of us. For we all, being human, have some suicide story in our past or our future.

Ei ole niin väliä, ketä rakastaa, kunhan rakastaa.

Alexander and Caesar have had this in common: to be loved and wept by the conquered, and to perish by the hands of their own countrymen. Such men have no country; they belong to the world.

When you feel yourself to be in critical condition, you must treat yourself as gently as you would a sick friend.

We're human. We all occasionally wet ourselves. No one is really better than anyone else. We're just all trying to make it through the year as best we can. We screw up sometimes. We succeed sometimes. We laugh. We cry. We go on. Those are the things we should really share with each other this holiday season, right, if we dare send a letter? We should share the truth. We should share the insanity.

This was a dog that had lived a nightmare of a life and still never whined or howled or cried out of pain or discomfort. You don't make a sound, I learned from Wonder, when no one ever comes to see how you're doing.

If you are well-mannered towards those whose views are similar to yours, you may be said to exhibit a fairly good character. But, if you behave properly wit those holding divergent views from you or who criticize you, then you deserve to be credited with having an excellent character. (p. 99)

Not through repression, but through knowledge of the differences within ourselves can we achieve the solidarity with others which, though necessarily partial, is essential for the creation of a more just and free world.

Haalaat chup kara dete hain insaan ko wagarna bolna sabh ko aata hain

Jiska bachpan hi ghar ki ladaaiya dekh guzra ho Woh ab dara sehma sa rehta hain toh zamaane ko malaal kyu

You never really know someone until you have been their friend.

I have discovered that most people have no one to talk to, no one, that is, who really wants to listen. When it does at last dawn on a man that you really want to hear about his business, the look that comes over his face is something to see.

There is nothing wrong with anything; there is nothing wrong with anybody.

But because we've all been readers, we know what the experience is like, and we hope that what certain writers have given to us, we will give to someone.

Revenge and punishment both imply, "Even if I'd been you, and I'd had your life, I would never have done what you did." And that in turn implies, "I wouldn't have done it, because I'm better than you." But the person who says, "I'm better than you," is taking a serious step in a very dangerous direction. And the person who says, "Even if I'd had your life, I would never have done what you did," is very probably wrong.

There was no feeling at all between Joan and me, so I talked about myself. I talked without stopping for two hours about myself, pulling little sounds of understanding out of poor Joan's mouth the way in prison we pulled plates of food from slots in the doors.

Most things break, including hearts. The lessons of life amount not to wisdom, but to scar tissue and callus.

it is an easy mistake to think that non-talkers are non-feelers.

Is that the basis of friendship? Is it as reactive as that? Do we respond only to people who seem to find us interesting?... Do we all buzz or ring or light up when people press our vanity buttons, and only then? Can I think of anyone in my whole life whom I have liked without his first showing signs of liking me?

One thing I have learned hard, if indeed I have learned it now: it is a reduction of our humanity to hide from pain, our own or others'. To hide from anything. That was Marian's text. Be open, be available, be exposed, be skinless. Skinless? Dance around in your bones.

I would like to hear your life as you heard it, coming at you, instead of hearing it as I do, a sober sound of expectations reduced, desires blunted, hopes deferred or abandoned, chances lost, defeats accepted, griefs borne. I don't find your life uninteresting, as Rodman does. I would like to hear it as it sounded while it was passing. Having no future of my own, why shouldn't I look forward to yours.

The writers I admired and still admire were not carpenters, but more like sculptors. Their art was and is a real probing of real and troubling human confusions.