Quotes About Empathy

The strangest thing was that I felt it, I felt everything. Normally I feel nothing but itching, discomfort, tightness, soreness. The surface of my skin is dulled by scars, lots of it is numb -- nerve damage, apparently. When he touched me, I felt everything. It was like having new skin.

With me, it had always been easier to fall. Now my sister...well she was the climber. She could climb a mountain while I could fall from 10 feet with my eyes closed. We were so much alike sometimes I swore I could read her mind, she was after all my twin.

I knew I love him then. It was the first time I cried out of hurt and the thought that he might never fully understand me.

Byrne had an inspiration. He called Nim over, put the ointment on Nim's hand, and asked him, in plain English, to put it on Midge's wound. Nim promptly walked over to Midge, slathered the ointment on his ankle, and in doing so broke the ice between them.

There's something about her," Caire said in a low voice. "She cares for everyone about her, yet neglects herself. I want to be the one who cares for her.

It was a strange thing, this feeling of empathy. He'd never experienced it before. He realized that what hurt this woman hurt him as well, that what made her bleed caused a hemorrhage of pain within his soul.

Sit down and tell me everything, child. Hurt feelings and hopeless despair are no match for tea and biscuits.

It seemed awful that the only things she knew about him were those that made him miserable.

Aber weißt du,' fuhr sie fort, 'keine von uns steckt in ihrer Haut. So sehr uns das Wohl anderer Menschen am Herzen liegt, wir können nicht ihr Leben leben. Jeder kann nur das tun, was ihm möglich ist. Es mag mehr sein, als das, was wir, also du oder ich, tun könnten, oder auch weniger, aber meistens ist es etwas anderes.

When people marry awful people, just be grateful that you aren't them – either of them.

It is extraordinarily difficult not to hate someone when one feels powerless with them.

Das schönste an einer Freundschaft ist,' sagte sie, 'zu tun, wozu man Lust hat, ohne mit dem anderen reden zu müssen.

He always -- or always tried -- to do things from larger principles, not out of what he felt about people, or any particular people, but what he thought people ought to feel about -- humanity. He wasn't really interested in people singly or personally.

La gente crede che le cose dette siano più facili da cancellare, mentre in realtà il tono di voce, i movimenti e le espressioni le fissano in modo indelebile.

Right and wrong, I learned that day, could not really be taught after all, only felt.

None of us are perfect, for which reason we should heed the voice of charity when it whispers in our ears, "Do not magnify the imperfections of others.

I loved reading the Dalai Lama's words: "My religion is loving-kindness." I realized that meant loving-kindness to everyone in my life: past, present, and future; and that meant loving-kindness to myself--in my pain, in my jealousy, in my fear.

He said, 'Don't mind what happened to me. Don't be angry. I'm a frail creature with certain crude reflexes.

Surely it's better to be human and live with grief, than outgrow your humanity and learn to raise the dead too late to raise your own.

It touched me to be trusted with something terrible.

It's funny; in this era of e-mail and voice mail and all those things that even I did not grow up with, a plain old paper letter takes on amazing intimacy.

There is nothing harder, at moments, than talking to someone who has all the power of silence.

I've read there is no such thing as a single tear, that old poetic trope. And perhaps there isn't, since hers was simply a companion to my own.

then you must say to her, 'Madame, I observe that your heart is broken. Allow me to repair it for you...