Quotes About Empathy

The only true way to expand your world is to inhabit an otherness beyond ourselves. There is one simple word for this: empathy. Don't let them fool you. Empathy is violent. Empathy is tough. Empathy can rip you open. Once you go there, you can be changed. Get ready: they will label you sentimental. But the truth is that the cynics are the sentimental ones.

She expected no judgement and wanted no pity.

Once I thought we could never solve our conflict, we would continue hating each other forever, but it is not written anywhere that we have to go on killing each other. The hero makes a friend of his enemy. That's my duty. Don't thank me for doing it. That's all it is, my duty. When they killed my daughter they killed my fear. I can do anything now.

He was standing on the little ledge of reality he had left, but it seemed to me that he wasn't getting high, just getting level. He had an affinity with pain. If he couldn't cure it, he took it on.

Stories matter. They send our kids to war. They open up our pockets. They break our hearts.

He was not interested in absolving the attackers, but he had to admit if he had been born under the same circumstances he would undoubtedly have become a fighter himself, maybe even the same sort of man who had murdered his son.

They have a deep need just to talk, just to tell a story, however small or reckless.

Pity is such a shabby thing. I can torment myself with wanting to feel pity, and yet I don't succeed.

Being willing to forgive is not the same as being weak. Indeed, it takes a great deal of strength to accept someone else's acknowledgment of their mistakes.

Forgive me for saying so, Your Highness, Clarissa said slowly, but for one as unaccustomed to good deeds as you, perhaps it would be best if you started with one on a smaller scale. Something like, I don't know, spreading bread crumbs for birds? Birds? Valentina stared at Clarissa as if she had sprouted wings and would fly off. Why on earth would I wish to feed birds? It was just a thought, Clarissa murmured.

Being willing to forgive is not the same as being weak.

Sometimes a man doesn't want to be strong. Sometimes a man just wants to be human.

To the people who love you, you are beautiful already. This is not because they're blind to your shortcomings but because they so clearly see your soul. Your shortcomings then dim by comparison. The people who care about you are willing to let you be imperfect and beautiful, too. (20)

Did your mom ever tell you, 'If you can't say something nice, don't say anything'? She was right–and talking nicely also applies when you're talking to yourself, even inside your head. (339)

Because I was more often happy for other people, I got to spend more time being happy. And as I saw more light in everybody else, I seemed to have more myself. (250)

One woman couldn't change the world. She could just make small parts of it better.

Frank pitied anyone naïve enough to believe they could predict with certainty how another human being would act.

The truth-that love is the highest goal to which man can aspire.

The more one forgets himself—by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love—the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself.

No one has the right to do wrong, even if wrong has been done to them.

We dislike talking about our experiences. No explanations are needed for those who have been inside, and the others will understand neither how we felt then nor how we feel now.

It is not for me to pass judgement on those prisoners who put their own people above everyone else. Who can throw a stone at a man who favors his friends under circumstances when, sooner or later, it is a question of life or death? No man should judge unless he asks himself in absolute honesty whether in a similar situation he might not have done the same.

No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him.

Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality. No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him.