Quotes About Empathy

He felt people were never intentionally beastly or malicious, but they were pompous and foolish; awful decisions were made by men divorced from their own humanity.

O]ne should always treat one's animals well. All else will follow.

When you're a kid it's people's cruelty that makes you cry, then when you're an adult it's their kindness.

He was always teasing me about not reading books, but one day he said: Reading a book is a dangerous thing, Justine. A book can make you find room in yourself for something you never thought you'd understand. Or worse, something you never wanted to understand.

Reading a book is a dangerous thing, Justine. A book can make you find room in yourself for something you never thought you'd understand. Or worse, something you never wanted to understand.

Thanks," she says - and suddenly tears well and fall. Augustus understands: not because she's suffered but because he's helping her. When you're a child people's cruelty makes you cry. When you're an adult it's their kindness.

There's always someone's father, someone's mother, someone's wife, someone's son. This is the problem with killing and eating people. One of the problems.

The modern adult, Jake had written, has really only one thing to say to its inner child: I'm sorry. I'm so fucking sorry 

It's the inner life that fucks up relationships.

It's why we close the eyes, too. The dead shouldn't have to look on the lewd aliveness of the living.

The more you read, the harder it is to condemn.

I read somewhere that when you're a kid it's people's cruelty that makes you cry, then when you're an adult it's their kindness.

W]e are basically more similar to our patients than we are different from them. The psychological mechanisms in pathological states are merely extensions of principles involved in normal developmental functioning. Doctor and patient are both human beings. [...] [C]ountertransference in the psychiatrist and transference in the patient are essentially identical processes - each unconsciously experiences the other as someone from the past.

You shut your door to these poor women," he said so they could hear him, "and you'll answer for it the rest of your lives. You won't sleep. You'll choke on drinks. The food you eat'll block up your bowels and you'll die of your own shit.

Like blind boys they found each other, and confirmed each other, and through the FM of the flesh they sent to one another impulses of courage and affection.

She looked at him bravely now for the first time, at his face, the face from which a child had fled, and drew breath. She rose. Her eyes filled. She knew. He took her in his arms and kissed her ardently. Men in their hosts, young and old, innocent and corrupt, had paid her for her favors, but she put her arms about him of her own free will as though to give him what she could in recompense for this, the last gift she guessed, of his manhood.

Most times we're so focused on what we think we want that we can't appreciate how happy we already are. It's only when we forget about our problems and help others forget theirs that we realize how good we really have it.

It's never too late. We've come around to a better way of life with showing love and giving love. That's what matters.

Then I said, "Mom…" "Yes?" "Thank you for all you do for me. For how much you work and change your schedule to be with me." "How did you know I did that?" "I just don't say thank you enough." She looked at me and her eyes filled. "Do you know why I do it, Eddie?" "Why?" "Because you're my greatest joy, Eddie. You're

Someone once told me that everyone deserved to be loved. Even the unlovable? Maybe especially them.

the way we ignore the suffering of others and close our ears to their cries of pain. The way we disrespect our fellow man and are selfish for our own needs. Much of human suffering is avoidable. But a righteous path has a high price, and many are not prepared to pay that price.

Justice, then, must function at both levels: personal and communal. It must flow in both directions: from one individual to another and from the community as a whole to each individual.

People as a rule do mean much more than they understand.

She liked to be near him now that she had thought of a way to prove to him that life had taught her to understand and love him.