Quotes About Empathy

You can't love someone without imaginative sympathy, without beginning to see the world from another point of view. You can't be a good lover, a good artist or a good politician without this capacity (you can get away with it, but that's not what I mean). Show me the tyrants who have been great lovers.

I'm not surprised some people prefer books. Books make sense of life. The only problem is that the lives they make sense of are other people's lives, never your own.

When we are young and sensitive, we are also at our most hurtful; whereas when the blood begins to slow, when we feel less sharply, when we are more armoured and have learnt how to bear hurt, we tread more carefully.

You must not be angry with me. You must think of me as an incomplete person.

When I was going out with her, it always seemed that her actions were instinctive. But then I was resistant to the whole idea that women were or could be manipulative. This may tell you more about me than it does about her. And even if I were to decide, at this late stage, that she was and always had been calculating, I'm not sure it would help matters. By which I mean: help me.

The despairing are always being urged to abstain from selfishness, to think of others first. This seems unfair. Why load them with responsibility for the welfare of others, when their own already weighs them down?

I swiftly realised how grief sorts out and realigns those around the griefstruck; how friends are tested; how some pass, some fail. Old friendships may deepen through shared sorrow; or suddenly appear lightweight.

Love means never having to say you're sorry (on the contrary, it frequently means doing just precisely that).

I certainly believe we all suffer damage, one way or another. How could we not, except in a world of perfect parents, siblings, neighbours, companions?

You realize that tough love is also tough on the lover.

An English silence—one in which all the unspoken words are perfectly understood by both parties—prevailed. I got into my bed and wept. The matter was never referred to again.

What did I care about saving the world if the world couldn't, wouldn't, save her?

He had entered some state of grace—but one that did not exclude. He made you feel you were his co-thinker, even if you said nothing.

Fear: what did those who inflicted it know? They knew that it worked, even how it worked, but not what it felt like. 'The wolf cannot speak of the fear of the sheep,' as they say.

Cast out the beam from your own eye before you seek to extract the mote from the eye of another.

She knew me better than anyone else in the world. And still wanted to have lunch with me. And let me go on and on about myself.

For instance: that when we are young and sensitive, we are also at our most hurtful; whereas when the blood begins to slow, when we feel less sharply, when we are more armoured and have learnt how to bear hurt, we tread more carefully.

To be a stoic in an age of self-pity is to be judged standoffish; worse, unfeeling.

was my closest friend, and continued so for many years. He was the gentlest of us, the most thoughtful, the one who put most trust in others. And—perhaps because of these very qualities—he was the one who had most trouble with girls and, later, women. Was there something about his softness, and his inclination to forgive, which almost provoked bad behaviour in others? I wish I knew the answer to that, not least because of the time I let him down badly. I

You realise how sympathy and antagonism can coexist.

time's many paradoxes. For instance: that when we are young and sensitive, we are also at our most hurtful; whereas when the blood begins to slow, when we feel less sharply, when we are more armoured and have learnt how to bear hurt, we tread more carefully. Nowadays

Don't ever have dogs, Paul. They die on you, and then there comes a point when you don't know whether to get one last one or not. One for the road. So here we are, Sibyl and me. Either I'll die and break her heart or she'll die and break mine. Not much of a choice, is

Don't think ill of me, remember me well. Tell people you were fond of me, that you loved me, that I wasn't a bad guy. Even if, perhaps, none of this was the case.

This was another skill women were meant to learn: when a man's story had come to an end. Mostly, it wasn't a problem, as the end was thumpingly obvious; or else the narrator started snorting with laughter in advance, which was always a pretty good clue. Martha had long ago decided only to laugh at things she found funny. It seemed a normal sort of rule; but most men found it rebuking.