Quotes About Empathy

ou think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read

Close up, you see the person's wrinkles, warts, and pimples; when close to you, the person has innumerable ways of driving you up the wall: but when far from you, these very same imperfections become irreplaceable and beautiful, testifying, after all, to how much each cared about the other. Close up, the person's imperfections matter, but from far away, you see your own. The questions then is not How did I stand her? but How did she stand me?

When two people have so much to say to each other that there's almost nothing they can say, and they just stare at each other. But that's saying something, too.

The role of the artist is exactly the same as the role of the lover. If I love you, I have to make you conscious of the things you don't see." ? James Baldwin

It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connect me with all the people that were alive, or who had ever been alive.

You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read

You get so used to being hit you find you're always waiting for it. (...) How can I say what it feels like? I don't know. I know everybody's in trouble and nothing is easy, but how can I explain to you what it feels like to be black when I don't understand it and don't want to and spend all my time trying to forget it? I don't want to hate anybody - but now maybe, I can't love anybody either - are we friends? Can we really be friends?

The greatest poet in the English language found his poetry where poetry is found: in the lives of the people. He could have done this only through love — by knowing … that whatever was happening to anyone was happening to him

People who cannot suffer can never grow up, can never discover who they are.

Books taught me that the things that tormented me were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive. – James Baldwin, born on this day in 1924

I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense once the hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.

We had got on badly, partly because we shared, in our different fashions, the vice of stubborn pride.

I imagine that one of the reasons that people cling to their hate and prejudice so stubbornly, is that they sense that once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with their own pain.

This crucial day may be the day on which an Algerian taxi driver tells him how it feels to be an Algerian in Paris. It may be the day on which he passes a café terrace and catches a glimpse of the tense, intelligent and troubled face of Albert Camus.

We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed. As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop which makes it run over. So in a series of acts of kindness there is, at last, one which makes the heart run over.

We must take our friends as they are.

nobody can live longer in peace than his neighbor chooses.

When you consider that presidents and chief-justices and archbishops and kings and statesmen are human beings like you and me and the laundryman, the thought becomes too horrible for humanity to face.

In building his company and living his life, Hewlett adhered to a simple motto that he oft repeated: "Never stifle a generous impulse.

God suffers with you!

Isn't it only laughter we can stay human?

It's only Christian to be chivalrous to your enemies.

Why is it there is always such violence between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law? Doesn't daughter-in-law, in time, become mother-in-law? Why does she then always treat her own daughter-in-law to a lashing tongue and make her life a misery, and why does that girl do the same in her turn? Doesn't anyone learn?

You must be patient before you criticize.