Quotes About Empathy

Every time a man unburdens his heart to a stranger he reaffirms the love that unites humanity.

If women understand by emancipation the adoption of the masculine role then we are lost indeed. If women can supply no counterbalance to the blindness of male drive the aggressive society will run to its lunatic extremes at ever-escalating speed. Who will safeguard the despised animal faculties of compassion, empathy, innocence and sensuality?

Her love for him not militate against her love for other people, did not force itself upon him when he did not invite it, did not belittle or destroy him, even by mendacious praise. When he was dying she was there to help him. This strange distant love-affair is only one example of how many forms love might take if we had the foresight and the imagination to rescue it from the stereotypes of our dying consumer culture.

Half the point in reading novels and seeing plays and films is to exercise the faculty of sympathy with our own kind, so often obliterated in the multifarious controls and compulsions of actual social existence.

Charity sees the need not the cause.

God gives, but man must open his hand.

You know kids, I wish every mom and dad would make a speech to their teenagers and say kids, be free, be whatever you are, do whatever you want to do, just so long as you don't hurt anybody

No matter how old you are, nobody likes it when someone yucks your yum.

Crawling into the skin of the other (empathy). 'It must be hard to …' 176

_It must have been_ are magical words that say to the _Other_, 'I understand how it was.

You hear me speak. But do you hear me feel?

To be a mother, to feel maternally, means to turn especially to the helpless, to incline lovingly and helpfully toward everything on earth that is small and weak. Therefore the principle of motherhood is a dual one. It hinges not only on the birth of the child, but also on fostering and protecting that which has been born.

One of the advantages of a great sorrow is that nothing else seems painful.

I found that the writer who says SUBLATA LUCERNA NULLUM DISCRIMEN INTER MULIERES ('when the lamp is taken away, all women are alike') says true; but without love, this great business is a vile thing.

We are exquisitely social creatures. Our survival depends on understanding the actions, intentions and emotions of others. Mirror neurons allow us to grasp the minds of others not through conceptual reasoning but through direct simulation. By feeling, not by thinking.

All men want to be treated like kings in a relationship, and I think if women don't indulge that sometimes, their men are likely to stray and look for someone who can give that to them.

i vinti che più ispirano la nostra pietà sono le persone che non stavano con nessuna delle due parti in lotta. E che dopo la fine della guerra sono state dimenticate dalla storia.»

Cómo se permite usted, más bien, sostener aún que existen niños malos? Póngase de rodillas y pida perdón.

Secondo te qual è la qualità più importante per una persona? -Il senso dell'umorismo. Se hai il senso dell'umorismo-non l'ironia, o il sarcasmo, che sono un'altra cosa- non ti prendi sul serio. E allora non puoi essere cattivo, non puoi essere stupido o non puoi essere volgare. Se ci pensi comprende quasi tutto.

One day at a time. He had also added that it's a good rule not to take anything personally. We think that everything revolves around us: both what other people do and what they don't do. It's almost never true. Things happen and that's it; most other people are uninterested in us, for good or ill.

I didn't know what to say in reply, so I simply nodded, which always works because the meaning is put into it by the person you are talking to.

We know a lot of ugly things happen in the world and we can't allow ourselves to get indignant about all of them. We have limited reserves of indignation. But when the events are so close, when they touch you personally, what must you do? It's one thing not being able to do anything – you know something isn't right, but you can't do anything about it – it's quite another when you have in your own hands the possibility of reacting in some way.

If Jesus were at the pulpit, he would be saying, "I know that you suffer. I lived on this earth, too, and I know for a fact that it's hard and painful sometimes.

For who has not wondered whether everything in this world might be alive? Though it be made of stone or wood or metal, there might be life in it, or opinion or, worst of all, resentment. The hewn boards of any boardwalk, did they recall the bite of the saw? Does memory linger in them? Perhaps the forge's fire still dreams in each nail. A building might be made entirely of injured and brooding things.