Quotes About Empathy

This is why I read novels: so I can escape my own unrelenting monologue.

It's not right to profit from another person's suffering.

All of us can carry this understanding into our private lives: Something we did can be separated from who we are and who we want to be. Our past selves need not be a blueprint for our future selves. The road to redemption starts with the understanding that who we are includes what we have done but also transcends it, and the vehicle for transcending it is self-compassion.

When you do anything that harms others—get them in trouble, verbally abuse them, or punch them out—a powerful new factor comes into play: the need to justify what you did.

Understanding without vengeance, reparation without retaliation, are possible only if we are willing to stop justifying our own position.

sensitive lover." From our standpoint, therefore, misunderstandings, conflicts, personality differences, and even angry quarrels are not the assassins of love; self-justification is.

As Debra and Frank's problems accumulated, each developed an implicit theory of how the other person was wrecking the marriage. (These theories are called "implicit" because people are often unaware that they hold them.)

Successful partners extend to each other the same self-forgiving ways of thinking we extend to ourselves: They forgive each other's missteps as being due to the situation but give each other credit for the thoughtful and loving things they do. If one partner does something thoughtless or is in a crabby mood, the other tends to write it off as a result of events that aren't the partner's fault:

Peres took a third course. "When a friend makes a mistake," he said, "the friend remains a friend, and the mistake remains a mistake.

Daisy had her own criteria for judging people. On the whole, she expected to like people she met, and on the whole, she did. It seemed to her a much pleasanter way to live than to go about looking for superficial defects such as the wrong class, or a brown face, thus eliminating a lot of delightful people from one's acquaintance.

I still believe that everyone is beautiful in some way and by seeing the beauty in others we make ourselves more beautiful.

devastating effects." This personal revelation from a man he had just met made

Loving someone doesn't mean that you only care for them when you feel like it. It means that you forgive them when they mess up.

RULE #13: Don't bear the weight alone when you can dump some on a friend.

O Brasil precisa ser dirigido por uma pessoa que já passou fome. A fome também é professora. Quem passa fome aprende a pensar no próximo, e nas crianças.

O Brasil precisa ser dirigido por uma pessoa que já passou fome. A fome também é professora.

Stephen had just come from a class discussion in which several students believed that the right cup of herbal tea would save them from pain and sorrow. Well acquainted with pain and sorrow, Stephen did not contribute to the discussion. He merely crossed these idiots off his list of possible friends.

Guys with nice person names try to be sympathetic.

The only evil is that I don't mind that it happened.

There's a certain mentality in law enforcement that says you shouldn't be the type of person who takes things personally. If you are, you're weak. Build a wall. I hear that one a lot. The problem is, I'm a person. And when another person calls me on the phone asking for my compassion and my help, I don't want them to have to jump my wall to get it.

If your loved ones only get your attention when they are in crisis, pretty soon you've got a lot of crises on your hands, especially with kids.

To the extent that we are all educated and informed, we will be more equipped to deal with the gut issues that tend to divide us.

If people could handle their self-loathing, customer service would be smoother.

Eye contact is what keeps us civilized.