Quotes About Empathy

You're only lonely if you're not there for you.

Ancient people, we don't just need to find out what things they made, how they lived. We need to see through their eyes, sense what they sensed… aware that their senses would have been much sharper than ours… accepting that they might well have been aware of things we no longer perceive.

People tell me they idolise me, want to be like me, but I tell them, 'trust me, you don't want my life.' I've been a very tortured soul.

You don't right the wrongs of past by wronging the people of the present. (character Norm Woodruff)

You don't right the wrongs of the past by wronging the people of the present. (character Norm Woodruff)

Every gift, though small, is in reality great, if it be given with affection.

The dilemma of Brechtian performance is that, for all of Brecht's emphasis on rationality and the undermining of theatrical illusion, the actor must convincingly portray something that she is not.

The time to make your mind up about people, is never.

The time to make up your mind about people, is never.

That on any day you could pick there are thousands and thousands of little deaths, tiny tragedies, and that all of them matter.

And like all the people who lost no one, the tourists, who go to New York to cry over the rubble. I want to tell them to go home and hold their children or their lovers or their parents. I want to tell them that they are using that place as an excuse to be sad and afraid when there will be reason enough for that in their own lives if they just wait.

to no one did he bare his soul so utterly

that the greatest happiness lies in living for others. The self and its appetites, the satisfaction of which only yields deeper hungers, are to the soul as mooring cables to an airship. To cut them willingly and without regret is to know true emancipation, the kind that cannot be granted by constitutions, proclamations, manifestos. Yes

There was so much human suffering in these scenes that I could not respond to it.

Psychopaths have no ethics, no scruples, and no conscience. Something inside is gone. They just aren't capable of those emotions. That's why killing is so easy for a real psychopath. Society has a lot of problems understanding that.

They say it's worse to see someone you love getting tortured or hurt than being tortured or hurt yourself.

Listening: You can convey no greater honor than actually hearing what someone has to say.

People take things differently. What one person would consider a helpful inquiry another might take as an aggressive criticism.

Alexander refused to drink when his army could not. He took the helmet of precious water and poured it on the ground in full view of his army. To the parched men, for their king to share in their suffering in this way meant more than the water soaking into the sand. They were so heartened, says Arrian, it was as if they had each drunk every drop that he poured on the ground.

O come the time, and haste the day,When man shall man no longer crush,When Reason shall enforce her sway,Nor these fair regions raise our blush,Where still the African complains,And mourns his yet unbroken chains.

conditions that make us feel anonymous, when we think that others do not know us or care to, can foster antisocial, self-interested behaviors. My

But that meaningful respect needs to come from doing pro-social things that make life better in some way for others. It should not derive from out-drinking their buddies or doing some stupid shit better than them.

people who are predominantly present-oriented tend to be willing to help others but appear less willing or able to help themselves.

One of Allen Ginsberg's T-shirts said, "Well, while I'm here, I'll do the work. And what's the work? To ease the pain of living. Everything else, drunken dumbshow.