Quotes About Empathy

How then did it work out, this? How did one judge people, think of them? How did one add up this and that and conclude that it was liking one felt, or disliking?

But when the web is pulled askew, hooked up at the edge, torn in the middle, one remembers that these webs are not spun in mid-air by incorporeal creatures, but are the work of suffering human beings, and are attached to grossly material things, like health and money and the houses we live in.

That people should love like this, that Mr. Bankes should feel this for Mrs. Ramsay (she glanced at him musing) was helpful, was exalting.

The writer has us by the hand, forces us along her road, makes us see what she sees, never leaves us for a moment or allows us to forget her. At the end we are steeped through and through with the genius, the vehemence, the indignation of Charlotte Bronte. Remarkable faces, figures of strong outline and gnarled feature have flashed upon us in passing; but it is through her eyes that we have seen them.

It was only by scorning all she met that she kept herself from tears, and the friction of people brushing past her was evidently painful.

They know what to say if spoken to. They laugh really; they get angry really; while I have to look first and then do what other people do when they have done it.

it being her experience that the religious ecstasy made people callous (so did causes); dulled their feelings

Si no dices la verdad sobre ti mismo, difícilmente podrás decir la de las otras personas.

Hablo con ellas y descubro que para ser las personas más felices del mundo tan solo necesitan saber que lo son.

Her eyes seemed to question, to commiserate, to be, for a second, love itself.

it was impossible to dislike any one if one looked at them.

What one wants in the person one lives with is that they should keep one at one's best.

After all, we are not responsible. We are not judges. We are not called upon to torture our fellows with thumb-screws and irons; we are not called upon to mount pulpits and lecture them on pale Sunday afternoons. It is better to look at a rose, or to read Shakespeare as I read him here in Shaftesbury Avenue.

They stood there, isolated from the rest of the world. His immense self-pity, his demand for sympathy poured and and spread itself in pools at her feet, and all she did, miserable sinner that she was, was to draw her skirts a little closer round her ankles, lest she should get wet.

Es esta una de las torturas y desgracias de la vida: cuando son incapaces nuestros amigos de terminar sus cuentos.

Los ojos de los otros, nuestras prisiones; sus pensamientos, nuestras jaulas.

she often felt she was nothing but a sponge sopped full of human emotions.

She would not say of anyone that they were this or that.

Now, the truth is that when one has been in a state of mind (as nurses call it)— and the tears still stood in Orlando's eyes — the thing one is looking at becomes, not itself, but another thing, which is bigger and much more important and yet remains the same thing.

They are very large in effect, these painters; very little self-conscious; they have smooth broad spaces in their minds where I am all prickles & promontories.

Like all feelings felt for oneself, Mrs. Ramsay thought, it made one sad. It was so inadequate, what one could give in return; and what Rose felt was quite out of proportion to anything she actually was.

she felt, with her hand on the nursery door, that community of feeling with other people which emotion gives as if the walls of partition had become so thin that practically (the feeling was one of relief and happiness) it was all one stream...

Little Mr. Bowley, who had rooms in the Albany and was sealed with wax over the deeper sources of life but could be unsealed suddenly, inappropriately, sentimentally, by this sort of thing––poor women waiting to see the Queen go past––poor women, nice little children, orphans, widows, the War––tut tut––actually had tears in his eyes.

But with Peter everything had to be shared; everything gone into.