Quotes About Empathy

Stories are a communal currency of humanity.

We had the kind of conversations that only great friends can ever share. They were touched with magic.

In fact, knowing she'd been through hardship filled me with sweet tenderness.

To receive everything, one must open one's hands and give.

From time to time we complain about all kinds of things about other people, and we feel that we are being deceived. My father told us that these others are not living outside ourselves.

All true communication, even between two people speaking the same language, requires translation," Genji said. "In the end, our hearts must hear what cannot be spoken.

Perhaps it wasn't so important to understand after all. Perhaps what was most important was to care.

Mingling with people, hurting them, getting hurt by them…that's how you learn about others…and about yourself. If you don't you'll never be able to care about anyone but yourself.

The strong are always kind.

I don't know the sutras. I can't console Yamada's spirit by chanting sutras. But I've been thinking a lot, and here's what I think. I've thought about how much Yamada didn't want to die. . . . No, to tell the truth, I've thought about how much he didn't want to be killed. There's no denying that Yamada was killed.

Ralph Waldo Emerson explains, "It is one of the most beautiful compensations of this life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.

Our behavior toward others is often a reflection of our treatment of ourselves.

Skip the religion and politics, head straight to the compassion. Everything else is a distraction.

Should we not be trying to teach instead that no sentient being is alien to us? Further

We must experience ourselves as creative, loving, and profoundly connected to each other and to the rest of creation.

I smile sympathetically at a young man wearing a turban who looks to be as comfortable as the only husband at a Mary Kay party. Three years post–9/ 11 and they're still being treated like social pariahs. But, hey, African-Americans have endured three hundred plus years of it and all we did was take a boat ride.

Those with whom one disagrees should not be regarded as enemies but rather as people who's views deserve careful examination and may shed light on one's own.

After all, an apology forced before the speaker was ready to speak it was surely more insulting than no apology.

This, then, the reason God claimed vengeance for his own? That one not be made unfeeling?

Forgiveness was a strange gift. One that had to be shared in order to be kept.

Just as hundreds of brushstrokes comprised a finished canvas, people were made up of a lifetime of experiences, both good and bad. And without knowing what someone had endured, it was impossible to truly know them—and accept them—for who they were.

How very little a person knew about someone simply from looking at her. Yet how much people decided about others at a single glance. Herself included.

We never know the quality of someone else's life, though we seldom resist the temptation to assume and pass judgement.

Sure, why not?" she said. "You know, you read about a crime in the paper and you think how terrible for the victims, and then you turn the page and move on.