Quotes About Empathy

Of course what I'm about to share isn't true for me but... Friends, somebody said, are god's apology for relations. (p. 129)

Those who worry about the treatment of animals are often accused of sentimentality or of putting the plight of beasts before the immense problems of humanity. But it is quite rare to find a humanitarian who is indifferent to animals and surprisingly common to find that those who belittle animal rights are the same ones who find the pain of humans easy to bear.

Like the quality of mercy, the prompting of compassion is not finite, and can be self-replenishing.

because their lack of conscience prevents them from blushing—

Jefferson writes dismissively of slaves that "their griefs are transient." American white supremacists to this day maintain that blacks are "mud people" because their lack of conscience prevents them from blushing—they are not capable of summoning "blood in the face," as the

Your narrative may fail to grip if you haven't taken any care to find out how well or badly your audience member is faring (or feeling).

Cancer victimhood contains a permanent temptation to be self-centered and even solipsistic.

It kindled in me a resolution which I have tried to keep ever since: to spend at least once every year a little time in a country less fortunate than my own. (If

If someone tells me that I've hurt their feelings, I say, 'I'm still waiting to hear what your point is.

If you can't hear, I hope it's not my fault.

And once, in spite of the men who gripped him by each shoulder, he stepped slightly aside to avoid a puddle on the path. It is curious, but till that moment I had never realised what it means to destroy a healthy, conscious man. When I saw the prisoner step aside to avoid the puddle, I saw the mystery, the unspeakable wrongness, of cutting a life short when it is in full tide.

We speculate that it is at least possible that, once people accepted the fact of their short and struggling lives, they might behave better toward each other and not worse.

Christopher Hitchens

George feels that, even if all this double talk hasn't brought them any closer to understanding each other, the not-understanding, the readiness to remain at cross-purposes, is in itself a kind of intimacy.

The Nazis were not right to hate the Jews. But their hating of Jews was not without a cause. No one ever hates without a cause.

And again and again I have to remind myself the whole art of life is to lean on people, to involve oneself with them quite fearlessly and yet — when the props are kicked away — remain leaning, as it were, on empty air. Like levitation.

I had failed him; I knew it. But I could do no more. It was beyond my strength. That night, I think, he explored the uttermost depths of his loneliness.

I like hearing the sound of your voice, but I don't care a bit what you're saying.

The capacity for loyalty is stretched too thin when it tries to attach itself to the hypothetical solidarity of the human race.

It is a comfort to the wretched to have companions in misery

Solamen miseris socios habuisse doloris.

The Emperor decided to make a proclamation to his troops about the importance of compassion in the face of the rising tide of heinous fuckery and political weaselocity in the nearby kingdom of the United States.

I'm thinking of being a professional mourner. How hard can it be? Tear at your hair, sing a dirge or two, take the rest of the week off.

She doesn't understand that a writer is a special creature--that I'm different from everyone else. I'm not saying I'm superior to other people, just more sensitive, I guess.