Quotes About Empathy

What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?

If art does not enlarge men's sympathies, it does nothing morally.

Selbstsüchtige Menschen halten immer ihr eigenes Unbehagen für das Wichtigste auf der Welt.

When we are young we think our troubles a mighty business – that the world is spread out expressly as a stage for the particular drama of our lives and that we have a right to rant and foam at the mouth if we are crossed. I have done enough of that in my time.

I am just and honest, not because I expect to live in another world, but because, having felt the pain of injustice and dishonesty towards myself, I have a fellow-felling with other men, who would suffer the same pain if I were unjust or dishonest towards them. It is a pang to me to witness the suffering of a fellow-being, and I feel his suffering the more acutely because he is mortal—because his life is so short, and I would have it, is possible, filled with happiness and not misery

What are we here for if not to make life easier for each other?

Existe un poder en la mirada de un alma humana sincera y afectuosa que contribuye más a disipar los prejuicios y avivar la comprensión que los argumentos más elaborados.

The first condition of human goodness is something to love; the second, something to reverence.

surely the only true knowledge of our fellow-man is that which enables us to feel with him—which gives us a fine ear for the heart-pulses that are beating under the mere clothes of circumstance and opinion.

that she had two points of view from which she could observe the weakness of her fellow-beings, and reinforce her thankfulness for her own exceptional strength of mind.

Poor dog!" said Dinah, patting the rough grey coat, "I've a strange feeling about the dumb things as if they wanted to speak, and it was a trouble to 'em because they couldn't. I can't help being sorry for the dogs always, though perhaps there's no need. But they may well have more in them than they know how to make us understand, for we can't say half what we feel, with all our words.

If I really care for you, if I try to think myself into your position and orientation, then the world is bettered by my effort at understanding and comprehension. If you respond to my effort by trying to extend the same sympathy and understanding to others in turn, then the betterment of the world has been minutely but significantly extended. We want people to feel with us, more than to act for us.

sympathy is but a living again through our own past in a new form

Adam noticed Gyp's mental conflict, and though his anger had made him less tender than usual to his mother, it did not prevent him from caring as much as usual for his dog. We are apt to be kinder to the brutes that love us than to the women that love us. Is it because the brutes are dumb? "Go, Gyp; go, lad!" Adam said, in a tone of encouraging command; and Gyp, apparently satisfied that duty and pleasure were one, followed Lisbeth into the house-place.

For the wrong that rouses our angry passions finds only a medium in us; it passes through us like a vibration, and we inflict what we have suffered.

And your mind is a sort of world to me; you can tell me all I want to know. I think I should never be tired of being with you.

The master was odd. I was kind and just to my dependants, but I excited in them a shrinking, half-contemptuous pity; for this class of men and women are but slightly determined in their estimate of others by general considerations, or even experience, of character. They judge of persons as they judge of coins, and value those who pass current at a high rate.

Oh, the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person; having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but to pour them all out, just as they are, chaff and grain together, knowing that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then, with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away.

thee mustna take me unkind. I wasna driving at thee in what I said just now. Some 's got one way o' looking at things and some 's got another." "Nay, nay, Addy, thee mean

It was a question whether gratitude which refers to what is done for one's self ought not to give way to indignation at what is done against another

Love one another.

I don't know why nobody told you How to unfold your love

I always felt sorry for Elvis 'cause he was on his own. He had his guys with him, but there's only one Elvis. Nobody else knew what he felt like.

He who cannot forgive breaks the bridge over which he himself must pass.