Quotes About Empathy

Gardeners are generous because nature is generous to them, and because they know what it means to read about something and not be able to get it. (p.24)

Don't persuade, defend or interrupt. Be curious, be conversational, be real. And listen.

Rumi says: Out beyond ideas of wrong doing and right doing There is a field. I'll meet you there.

Only people who claim their own voice can hear the true song of another.

Face your embarrassment at being human, and you'll uncover a deep well of passion and compassion. It's a great power, your Open Secret. When your heart is undefended, you make it safe for whomever you meet to put down his burden of hiding, and then you both can walk through the open door.

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing," he writes, "there is a field. I'll meet you there.

I accept now that the point of life is not to reach perfection but to befriend the fact that human beings are works in progress.

It's easy to remain blind about ourselves when we stay within the safety zone—among people who are just like us, in a place that looks like home. We can trick ourselves into thinking that we are far more open-minded and bighearted than we really are. It's when we must walk our talk in the complex landscape of a messy life that self-righteous ideals are whittled down into the honest truth.

fearlessness is the product of tenderness.

where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves.

A heart made crooked through loss and change is a heart that can love the world and its less than perfect people.

Discovering fearlessness comes from working with the softness of the human heart. I

the same secret we will all know when death is just a breath away: In the end, what will matter is how much we loved—our children, our mates, our families, our friends, everyone we knew, everyone who traveled with us during our brief visit to this unbearably lovely place. What will matter is the good we did, not the good we expected others to do.

He said that in order to save the world you must serve the people in your life. "You gradually struggle less and less for an idea," Merton wrote, "and more and more for specific people. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationship that saves everything.

I'm not perfect. Remember that, and try to forgive me when I fail you.

The woman had been seen now a half-dozen times and had become a mass of characteristic motions and friendly staring eyes. Ellen longed to fix her into a thought, to know what she would say now that she knew how she would look saying it. She longed to find her out, to like her or to hate her.

Here's how Granny looks,' Melissy said, sucking in her lips to look toothless. 'Here's Granny.' 'Shame to you,' Ellen said. 'I'll whip you and whip hard if I hear you make fun of your granny. Don't let me hear e'er one of you make fun of your granny or your grandpap either. Granny, she's old. It's a shame to make fun of old folks. You'll be old yourself some day.

History remembers the velvet hearted.

Like all good mothers, she always knew the worst was going to happen and was disappointed and relieved when it finally did.

He was talking to strangers, hoping they would absolve him. They are the only ones who ever can.

If you love it enough, anything will talk with you." —G. W. CARVER

Even if a tamed wolf makes a good sheepdog, he will never understand how the sheep feel....You are most fortunate. For having been, as you thought, a coward, and helpless to fight - you know what that is like. You know what bitterness that feeling breeds - you know in your own heart what kind of evil it brings. And so you are most fit to fight it where it occurs.

It's possible to like bad people, but liking them doesn't make them good.

What are friends for, but to help each other get through bad times and have multiple orgasms?