Quotes About Empathy

The amazing thing about books is how they have lives of their own.

The study of God requires intellectual effort, historical imagination, empathic energy, and participation in a vital community of prayer (Augustine, Answer to Skeptics).

The art of looking at the problem from the other person's point of view, identifying his opportunities and his interests, an art that has traditionally been practiced by diplomats, lawyers, and chess players, is at the center of strategic analysis.

And she thinks perhaps that is what love is: letting someone else see that part of you that shatters like glass...They will grow old together, broken together, and as long as they both don't completely shatter at the same time, they might find a way to pick each other off the ground.

Margot knows by looking at him that she will have to lead. It is not something that she is used to, and if someone had asked her before this evening if the idea even interested her, she would have said no. But Henry's words suggest fragility, and she thinks maybe this extends to who he is, but she can also sense his strength, hidden somewhere like a secret, and this is the part she wants to know.

And this is his gift, the gift of listening and it reminds Margot of how plenty of people know how to talk but precious few are good at listening.

Infirmity and misery do not of necessity imply guilt.

I am sorry for only two things. These two things are: I am sorry that I have mistreated some few animals in my life time and I am sorry that I am unable to murder the whole darned human race

To rejoice in another's prosperity, is to give content to your own lot: to mitigate another's grief, is to alleviate or dispel your own.

If we want to understand the actions of other people, we have to understand how they interpreted their circumstances and the choices they faced--not the way we would interpret them or, rather, the way we think we would interpret them if we were in their shoes.

Often when we get to know someone whose words and deeds were off-putting, once we get a better sense of how that person is understanding events, our dislike dissipates.

We tend to resolve our perplexity arising out of the experience that other people see the world differently than we see it ourselves by declaring that these others, in consequence of some basic intellectual and moral defect, are unable to see things "as they really are" and to react to them "in a normal way." We thus imply, of course, that things are in fact as we see them, and that our ways are the normal ways. (Ichheiser, 1949, p. 39)

It is one of those simple but beautiful paradoxes of life: When a person feels that he is truly accepted by another, as he is, then he is freed to move from there and to begin to think about how he wants to change, how we wants to grow, how he can become different, how he might become more of what he is capable of being.

Active Listening provides parents with a way of moving in and offering to help the child define the problem for herself, and starting up the process of problem-solving within the child.

Parents report that Active Listening when a child is hurt and cries vigorously frequently brings about a dramatic and instantaneous cessation of the crying, once the child is certain her parent knows and understands how badly she feels or how much she is afraid. For the child, getting this understanding of her feelings is what she needs most.

I often tell parents, "Don't want your child to become something in particular; just want him to become." With such an attitude parents will inevitably find themselves feeling more and more accepting of each child and experiencing joy and excitement watching each become.

A jó kapcsolatok, sok egyéb mellett Å'szinteségrÅ'l, nyíltságról, megértésrÅ'l, és demokráciáról szólnak.

You, and those like you, take your fill of pleasure on earth by making the life of such as me bitter and black with sorrow; and then it is a fine thing, when you have had enough of that, to think of securing your pleasure in heaven by becoming converted!

We ought to have lived in mental communion, and no more.

The perfect woman, you see [is] a working-woman; not an idler; not a fine lady; but one who [uses] her hands and her head and her heart for the good of others.

Be a good boy, remember; and be kind to animals and birds, and read all you can.

Women are so strange in their influence that they tempt you to misplaced kindness.

But you will never realize that an incident which filled but a degree in the circle of your thoughts covered the whole circumference of mine. No person can see exactly what and where another's horizon is.

I think of people more kindly when I am away from them.