Quotes About Empathy

This is the strange way of the world, that people who simply want to love are instead forced to become warriors.

I wonder if this is how people always get close: They heal each other's wounds; they repair the broken skin.

Sometimes, in the movie theater or the supermarket, I look around at people who I suppose live their lives without a chemical crutch, and they amaze me.

When you die, there's that much less breath to the world, and across continents someone supposedly separate gasps for air. When Marie, Joseph, peter, Moxi, Oscar, when I weep for you, don't forget I weep as well for me.

Suddenly it is not she who needs me, but I who need her. Don't ask me to explain, I can't. I can. We are creatures who must give comfort. We ache to give comfort, to heal what hurts. The colic is making me a mother.

Being a mother means knowing the luxuriousness of giving comfort, bringing the slack body up, holding her close; she melts into your form, which is, when all is said and done, still your form.

Colleen had this idea -- a faded, crumpled, smudged idea -- that being nice counted for something.

They were alike, Dex realized.

Never speak like that. You must never let hatred take over! Then you are no better than Festus! And hatred like that will destroy you.

There is goodness in the world, Marcus, and kindness. You cannot forget that." Goodness? Kindness?

Old books exert a strange fascination for me -- their smell, their feel, their history; wondering who might have owned them, how they lived, what they felt.

Why would the queen greet Winter, a mutineer, with open arms?

executioner placed the noose around the condemned man's neck, Elizabeth intervened to spare him.

Instead of worrying about the question of suffering in the world, spend your time alleviating it!

Avoid groups of people who are arguing.

If you look at a person and see a monster, know that you are being shown a monster lurking in your own dungeon.

I am every wo/man. Every wo/man is me. So each of us partakes of the reality of everyone else.

surest remedy for the male disease of self-contempt is the love of a sensible woman.

Empathy is an important quality for a survivor. Kiley's desire to aid Meg may have helped her feel less like a victim. It may have given her at least some sense of personal power.

Helping someone else is the best way to ensure your own survival. It takes you out of yourself. It helps you to rise above your fears. Now you're a rescuer, not a victim. And seeing how your leadership and skill buoy others up gives you more focus and energy to persevere. The cycle reinforces itself: You buoy them up, and their response buoys you up. Many people who survive alone report that they were doing it for someone else (a wife, boyfriend, mother, son) back home.

The maddening thing for someone with a Western scientific turn of mind is that it's not what's in your pack that separates the quick from the dead. It's not even what's in your mind. Corny as it sounds, it's what's in your heart.

Called upon to give her baby what she never received herself, this mother may be conflicted about giving, unconsciously wanting her baby to give her the love and nurturing she never received.

The challenge for Attunement individuals is to learn how to attune to their own needs, to express them appropriately, and to tolerate more charge, fulfillment, expansion, and aliveness.

You can always tell a real friend; when you've made a fool of yourself, he doesn't feel you've done a permanent job.