Quotes About Empathy

with every action we take, we send love or suffering into the web that connects us.

Kindness is not a fixed trait that we either have or lack, but more like a muscle that can be developed and strengthened.

If we harm someone else, we're inevitably also hurting ourselves. Some quality of sensitivity and awareness has to shut down for us to be able to objectify someone else, to deny them as a living, feeling being—someone who wants to be happy, just as we do.

When we do our best to treat others with kindness, it's often a struggle to determine which actions best express our love and care for ourselves.

Sometimes people in abusive situations think they're responsible for the other person's happiness or that they're going to fix them and make them feel better. The practice of equanimity teaches that it's not all up to you to make someone else happy.

Awareness levels the playing field. We are all humans doing the best we can.

When we are willing to explore our own experiences, we open the doorway to deeper connection and intimacy.

Concepts such as loving kindness should never be used as weapons against our real feelings.

We learn from conflicts only when we are willing to do so.

As human beings, we're capable of greatness of spirit, an ability to go beyond the circumstances we find ourselves in, to experience a vast sense of connection to all of life.

The simple act of being completely attentive & present to another person is an act of love, and it fosters unshakeable well-being.

It's all too easy to slot someone into the category of "needing help" and not to recognize the tremendous help they are offering to others.

Mindfulness may help you gain insight into your role in conflicts with others, it won't single-highhandedly help you resolve them.

Moreover, a mind that is saturated by lovingkindness cannot be overcome by fear; even if fear should arise, it will not overpower such a mind.

The manifestation of the free mind is said to be lovingkindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity.

With our close friends, family members, and lovers, we hope to create a special world, one in which we can expect to be treated fairly, with care, tenderness, and compassion.

Buddhism has a term for the happiness we feel at someone else's success or good fortune. Sympathetic joy, as it is known, invites us to celebrate for others.

These are times when sympathetic joy comes naturally, but in a complex relationship the heart may not leap up so easily.

Be open to the possibility that there are other paths available to you in relating to yourself and to another.

Laughing at your pettiness probably works better than scolding yourself for it.

The more we identify and acknowledge moments when we're unable to share in someone else's pleasure and ask ourselves whether another person's happiness truly jeopardizes our own, the more we pave the way for experiencing sympathetic joy

Sympathetic joy is a practice. It takes time and effort to free ourselves of the scarcity story that most of us have learned along the way, the idea that happiness is a competition, and that someone else is grabbing all the joy.

Real love allows for failure and suffering.

We also try not to harm others verbally, seeing that our speech has tremendous power. Words do not just leave our mouths and disappear; they have great effects in this world.