Quotes About Empathy

Be aware that you can truly help people only by aiding them to become what they are, not what you are. I have heard you say 'If I were you, I would do this—or that.' 'I' am never 'you'—and my solutions may not be yours.

The imagination conjures so many things, and one feels the pain of them all, until one knows.

Las auténticas deudas rara vez son cuestión de dinero: son de amistad, confianza, ayuda cuando más la necesitas, una mano que toma la tuya en la oscuridad cuando estás solo.

Some people cannot think themselves into anyone else's pain. If they don't feel it themselves, then it isn't real.

I know," Daniel agreed. "Thank you for the bacon sandwiches." Mercy smiled. "There are times when it's the only thing that works.

Their accents must have been hard for her to follow, and their faces, matted under the grime, were haunted by a permanent wariness, a mixture of anger and fear.

Who knows the colors someone else sees?

but can it forgive everything? Should it? Which

You don't just tell horses, you know. They got minds o' their own, like anybody else.

If we were the Christian people we pretend to be, she wouldn't have had to take them. We would care for our own old and sick.

Beasts may kill one another, they may ignore the sick or distressed—but they never mock.

He was happy for other people's success.

I didn't realize what a—comfortless thing respect is.

It was odd how happiness unshared was only half as great, and yet any kind of misfortune alone was doubled.

He was one of the vast numbers of people who cannot imagine themselves into the class or gender, least of all the emotions, of a different person. That is lack of vision or sensitivity, even compassion, but it is not stupidity.

Nothing at all, except that he is human, and by hanging him we diminish ourselves as well.

It is a uniquely distressing experience to see yourself only through the eyes of others, too often those you have injured in some way, to know irrefutably what you have done but not why you did it, not the mitigating circumstances, the beliefs you held at the time which made your actions seem reasonable then.

She had a certain pity for people who wavered, she entirely understood fear. . . .

take a great deal closer look at others, and then decide with whom you would, or could, change places, and what sacrifice of your nature you would be prepared to make in order to do so.

there was something extraordinarily sweet and comfortable about a friend who knows you and accepts you at your worst, your most bitter, or defeated, who sees your emotional ugliness naked and is not afraid to call it by name, and yet does not turn from you or allow you to cease to struggle, who wills your survival as precious.

We can become so cruel and so selfish when we are afraid.

How do you forgive someone for not being what you wanted them to be, or what you thought they were? Especially when they are not sorry—perhaps they don't even understand?" "Or again, perhaps they do?" Hester suggested. "And how do they forgive us for having expected too much of them, instead of looking to see what they really were, and loving that?

If she protected him from this one, then how would he be armed or prepared for the next, or the one after that? Without pain, how would he learn compassion? If it were easy, of what value was it?

There is nothing more precious than true friendship. It is the rock upon which all other loves must stand, if they are to endure.