Quotes About Empathy

In marriage, insult arises again and again; and pain has to be not only endured, but consented to; and the amount of forgiveness that it necessitates is incredible and exhausting.

Naturally they were not a happy family, but they had good hearts, and did their best to console each other in bereavement and impoverishment.

Until that moment it had never seriously occurred to him that they were susceptible to the common suffering.

If you forgive more than you can afford, you may find yourself impoverished in emotion afterward, with a lowered resistance to whatever happens after that.

When you have the ability and desire to help someone, the only moral choice is to act.

Actually, offense is a sign of fear. If you're offended, it's because you're afraid that person can harm you in some way.

I will always try to share my faith with any person who is willing to listen. When I feel a wall go up, we can talk about something else... and I will pray for you.

But what was it with kids? Why was it that kids always had to dig whatever the wound, even deeper? Like bats radaring in to suck blood.

Sometimes being a friend means mastering the art of timing. There is a time for silence. A time to let go and allow people to hurl themselves into their own destiny. And a time to prepare to pick up the pieces when it's all over.

Sometimes being a friend means mastering the art of timing. There is a time for silence. A time to let go... And a time to prepare to pick up the pieces when it's all over.

The music in his laughter had a way of rounding off the missing notes in her soul.

Sometimes being a friend means mastering the art of timing. There is a time for silence. A time to let go and allow people to hurl themselves into their own destiny. And a time to prepare to pick up the pieces when it's all over.

Contempt mates well with pity.

You don't repay kindness with needless cruelty.

I can sometimes deal with men as equals and therefore can afford to like them.

Also, one of the simplest paths to deep change is for the less powerful to speak as much as they listen, and for the more powerful to listen as much as they speak.

If you want people to listen to you, you have to listen to them. If you hope people will change how they live, you have to know how they live. If you want people to see you, you have to sit down with them eye-to-eye.

Each others' lives are our best textbooks.

I wonder: If you think of someone you love, do you become a little more like them? I would like to think so.

Anybody who is experiencing something is more expert in it than the experts.

Our grief is not a cry for war. "That's how New Yorkers feel," the driver said. "They know what bombing looks like, and they know the hell it is. But outside New York, people will feel guilty because they weren't here. They'll be yelling for revenge out of guilt and ignorance. Sure, we all want to catch the criminals, but only people who weren't in New York will want to bomb another country and repeat what happened here.

A writer's greatest reward is naming something unnamed that many people are feeling. A writer's greatest punishment is being misunderstood. The same words can do both.

We are so many selves. It's not just the long-ago child within us who needs tenderness and inclusion, but the person we were last year, wanted to be yesterday, tried to become in one job or in one winter, in one love affair or in one house where even now, we can close our eyes and smell the rooms. What brings together these ever-shifting selves of infinite reactions and returnings is this: There is always one true inner voice. Trust it.

If I could, I would leave an open space for your story on every page.