Quotes About Empathy

They can't just be in that moment of grief with you. They can't just say, 'Yeah, this is some pretty awful stuff.' They have to try to fix it. They have to solve it for you in a couple of sentences, which is ridiculous, because it never solves anything.

Nobody will ever shoot me, and you know it. They will shoot my friend Luis, but they will never shoot me. And the people on the other side, they don't even see it. I see my privilege because I have lived both with it and without it. The jury did not even see. They did not even see, Raymond. What can you do with

He wished he could communicate what he knew to this frightened boy. But that never did any good anyway. People learned by what they experienced. It mattered little what anyone said to anyone.

I just thought maybe if I knew more, I could worry less." "Oh, I doubt that," she said. Then, "I can't really tell you how it's going, because I don't really know. He's talking to me. Talking is better than not talking. But beyond that it's hard to say.

How would you feel if somebody blamed you for something your mother did?

And that, I realized, is the worst price we pay for living in a dearth of true communication. We go through our whole lives thinking it's only us.

So I know. It's an illness, just like it says in the phrase. It's not a moral failing. It's funny how people have empathy for a physical illness. They see it as bad luck, and they never question whether you can help it. But mental illness we still treat with shame.

It was unnecessarily hurtful, and not intended to serve the common good.

suit the feelings of those we love and want to protect.

If you're feeling something, other people in other places are feeling it, too.

She said it was very selfish of me to base my participation in the world on whether the world was pleasing me at the moment. She said of course the world can be cruel; this is a given. She asked if I knew what she would have sacrificed to be ninety-two.

People need help with perspective sometimes. If they're all alone in their own head, they can lose perspective. Sometimes you need to use somebody else like a mirror.

Nothing is more dangerous than words. Words can kill your soul.

It isn't nice to hurt other people, and if you absolutely must hurt someone, it's important that you never do it on Christmas Eve or on Christmas Day, or maybe even a day or two before or after that.

Loving someone is knowing them.

How can you do that to a person? Hate them when they haven't even done anything to you?

I'm not saying this to be mean, Estelle, but this is not your day. I'm sorry. You have to let go and let things change.

Until you get it that's he's only what his experience has shaped him to be, you're seeing him as subhuman. As 'other' somehow. And the danger in the meantime is that he'll see that. He'll know how you view him. When you see a child as 'less than,' it's not long before self-fulfilling prophecy comes into play.

Ben prioritizes my sorrow over his own.

What did it mean to be friends in a world where just walking down the street together could get someone viciously beaten? In what ways could that friendship be expressed?

We all go around saying we don't know where we stand with other people, because we don't know what they're thinking. Which is true. But we can feel where we stand with them. But then we get back into our heads and start second-guessing what we feel and get ourselves all confused and tangled up again.

It means feelings come through loud and clear whether you express them in words or not.

Whatever you think your shortcomings are…you can't just lock yourself in the house so no one can notice or comment. We all have to take ourselves out into the world, flaws and all. And find a way to make the adjustment.

OK. So your story sadder'n mine. OK. But my story still my story. I mean…even if somebody else got it worse. What I got was bad enough. You know?