Quotes About Empathy

Someone else is doing the living for me, and all I have to do is let their stories, humor, knowledge, and images—some of which I'll never forget—flow through me, even as I forget to turn off the car when I arrive at my destination.

Booker T. Washington said, "I shall allow no man to belittle my soul by making me hate him

Love can bring people out of isolation, get them to take off the Halloween masks they wear, breathing through the slits.

My parents, teachers, and the culture I grew up in showed me a drawer in which to stuff my merciful nature, because mercy made me look vulnerable and foolish, and it made me less productive. It was distracting to focus worried eyes on others instead of on homework, and on poor Dad, after all he had done for us, and on the prize of making the whole family look good.

All good teachers know that inside a remote or angry person is a soul, way deep down, capable of a full human life--a person with hope of a better story, who has allies, and can read... To me, teaching is a holy calling, especially with students less likely to succeed. It's the gift not only of not giving up on people, but of even figuring out where to begin.

Books! To fling myself into a book, to be carried away to another world while being at my most grounded, on my butt or in my bed or favorite chair, is literally how I have survived being here at all.

It is the most difficult Zen practice to leave people to their destiny, even though it's painful—just loving them, and breathing with them, and distracting them in a sweet way, and laughing with them.

So I practice the fifth Get: I get in touch with others. I tell my partner the truth about how crunchy I feel inside, how unevolved or vindictive. Or I pick up the three-hundred-pound phone and tell a close friend. Or I get in the car and head to where one of my precious communities has gathered. This might be a park, my church, my Sunday school room; with hikers, sober people, townsfolk.

Sometimes this human stuff is slimy and pathetic—jealousy especially so—but better to feel it and talk about it and walk through it than to spend a lifetime being silently poisoned.

When you're feeling low, you don't want anyone even to joke that you may be in some kind of astrological strike zone where you'll be for the next seven years. On a bad day you also don't need a lot of advice. You just need a little empathy and affirmation." ~ @ANNELAMOTT

when all is said and done, we are all just walking each other home.

I have a quote taped to my office wall from an anonymous source that says, 'Love is hard. Love is ... seeing the darkness in another person and defying the impulse to jump ship.

You show up as is, hangdog, skeptical, pissy, or superior. Someone welcomes you and pats the seat next to them. Someone will get other people water, or watch the kids, or do a neighbor's laundry, or wash somebody's feet.

You can either leave something for people, or you can leave something in people.

I'm actually quite depressed," she said. "I don't see why." "What's the silver lining here? I can't seem to remember today." "The silver lining is that you're not going to have to see any more naked pregnant pictures of Demi Moore." She looked at me for a moment with real wonder. "God," she said, "that's a lot—I hadn't even thought of that.

As Father Ed Dowling said, sometimes heaven is just a new pair of glasses. When we put them on, we see the awful person, sometimes even ourselves, a bit more gently, and we are blessed in return. It seems, on the face of things, like a decent deal.

no matter how much we screwed up--and we all did, big-time--we always cared, showed up, and stayed close. We gave everything we could...This beauty was not lost--it cannot be. All that we gave remains.

When people shine a little light on their monster, we find out how similar most of our monsters are. The secrecy, the obfuscation, the fact that these monsters can only be hinted at, gives us the sense that they must be very bad indeed. But when people let their monsters out for a little onstage interview, it turns out that we've all done or thought the same things, that this is our lot, our condition. We don't end up with a brand on our forehead. Instead we compare notes.

I never used to take my turn. I always gave my turn away. I helped others have a great turn. I must have had a clipboard by the time I was six, because by then I had a whole caseload of people to keep track of. After they had all gotten a turn, then maybe I could go, if there was time and it didn't bother anyone. Now I take my turn, as a radical act.

Mercy is radical kindness. Mercy means offering or being offered aid in desperate straits. Mercy is not deserved. It involves absolving the unabsolvable, forgiving the unforgivable. Mercy brings us to the miracle of apology, given and accepted, to unashamed humility when we have erred or forgotten. Charge it to our heads and not our hearts, as the elders in black churches have long said.

Look around and see whom you can serve. This will fill you.

we won't love you if you're perfect

A man didn't specialize in mathematics because he had a rare talent for human relationships.

Given the infinite variety of human personalities, it was impossible to like everyone.