Quotes About Empathy

Sustaining relationships with others requires a good relationship to ourselves. Healthy self-esteem is an internal sense of worth that pulls one neither into 'better than' grandiosity nor 'less than' shame.

Use "and," never "but." "But" cancels out whatever came before it. "And" is roomy enough for all of your many feelings.

There is no place for objective reality in personal relationships. Objective reality is great for getting trains to run on time or for developing an important vaccine, but for ferreting out which point of view is "valid" in an interpersonal transaction, it is a loser.

Learning to listen relationally, listen with cool heads and clear boundaries, listen with the quietness of the heart and the gentleness of the body, means having a self so developed it can afford to yield.

When a mother quarrels with a daughter, she has a double dose of unhappiness hers from the conflict, and empathy with her daughter's from the conflict with her. Throughout her life a mother retains this special need to maintain a good relationship with her daughter.

Trying to make sense of other people's responses to us is a basic human activity. Accepting a mother's [or anyone's] anger by concluding that i is justified is a way of making sense of a difficult relationship. But this acceptance comes at a great cost, for it means that we see their cruelty as our shame.

Empathy, attention, and calm provide a scaffold that steadies the teen's volatile emotions.

Is quick relief worth it? No, it isn't. I'd rather take the pain myself so they won't have to.

When someone has cancer, the whole family and everyone who loves them does, too.

Listen twice as much as you talk, since you were born with two ears and one mouth.

So, Anna, did you know That when you kill yourself Those you say you love, They die too?

Be a love pharmacist: dispense hugs like medicine - they are!

Even hundredfold grief is divisible by love.

May love touch every brutal soldier and every uncherished heart.

Vegans plant goodwill.

If I had to sum up Friendship in one word, it would be Comfort.

Hate less, live longer.

Don't be mean when you've had a bad day. Be nice, and your day will get better.

Reach up (to accept blessings). Bend down (to respect humbly). Reach out (to give freely).

Aspire to a lower level of harm.

When one of my plants dies, I die a little inside too.

Let the rays of your heart shine on all who pass by.

I'm holding a teardrop for a friend Until his heartache and misery end.

Life can be hard but if you've got somebody to love — yeah!