Quotes About Empathy

And it is as you reap comfort from being white that we suffer for being Black and people of color. This is how we are tied to each other. You see, your comfort is linked to our pain and suffering.

There's no hatred that can ever be satisfied either in this world or the next, and the hatred that one has for oneself is probably the one for which there is no forgiveness.

Je n'ai jamais été jeune, parce que personne n'a voulu l'être avec moi.

True pain coming out of a man belongs primarily to God, it seems to me. I try and take it humbly to my heart, just as it is. And I endeavour to make it mine, to love it. I can understand all the hidden meaning of the expression which has become hackneyed now: to commune with, Because I really "commune" with his pain.

Oh! Je sais bien que la compassion d'autrui soulage un moment, je ne la méprise point. Mais elle ne désalèere pas, elle s'écoule dans l'âme comme a travers un crible. Et quand notre souffrance passe de pitié en pitié, ainsi que de bouche en bouche, il me semble que nous ne pouvons plus la respecter, ni l'aimer...

One of them, for example, which will probably haunt me more than any other is the problem of communication.

The fact that we are I don't know how many millions of people, yet communication, complete communication, is completely impossible between two of those people, is to me one of the biggest tragic themes in the world.

È terribile pensare che siamo tutti uomini, tutti destinati, chi più chi meno, a portare il nostro fardello sotto un cielo sconosciuto, e che non vogliamo fare il minimo sforzo per capirci a vicenda.

The tendency toward empathy is strongest between the ages of seven and twelve.

Researchers believe that the conscious cultivation of empathy, including through the reading of novels (see S. Keen), will make communication far easier and will save us from future world cataclysms. —The Journal of Community and Cortex

There's only one true identity—to be a living creature among living creatures. To be ephemeral and to value the Other, because he is ephemeral as well.

nothing is accomplished when people face each other shouting words that neither hear.

She hopped onto his knees to comfort him.

I wish people were all trees and I think I could enjoy them then.

When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it's your world for the moment. I want to give that world to someone else.

Everyone is a bore to someone. That is unimportant. The thing to avoid is being a bore to oneself.

Everyone alters and is altered by everyone else. We are all the time taking in portions of one another or else reacting against them, and by these involuntary acquisitions and repulsions modifying our natures.

Poverty is much more than a way of life," Jack later wrote. "It goes much farther than skin-deep. It's no tattoo that fades with time. Nor a brand that can be put out of mind except when faced. Poverty, if you've known it, is you.

Until we consider animal life to be worthy of the consideration and reverence we bestow upon old books and pictures and historic monuments, there will always be the animal refugee living a precarious life on the edge of extermination, dependent for existence on the charity of a few human beings.

Through our willingness to help others we can learn to be happy rather than depressed.

To give is to receive...

I am beginning to see that I don't have to judge or interpret the motives and behaviors of others. There is no need to decide who are the good guys and who are the bad, who should be blamed and who punished. I find it truly is "safe" to surrender the script written by me and trust in God's script.

Adults are children, too, because in every adult's heart, there is a child's life that will stay there for eternity. So please listen to children, because when you don't, it is like not listening to yourself.

I can be of no real help to another unless I see that the two of us are in this together, that all of our differences are superficial and meaningless, and that only the countless ways we are alike has any importance at all.