Quotes About Empathy

Colonel, it seems to me that beneath the fabric, be it blue or gray, men do seem to be very much alike. I found nothing alarming about the act at all, and my dear Colonel, I must say, I hardly found you … dangerous.

Nothing mattered to him about a person other than what was inside them.

We are called to plant these seeds in our world: to dare to tell every living soul that they already matter, that their seemingly mundane lives are a slowly unfolding mystery, that their small choices and acts of generosity are vitally important.

Being raw means connecting to other people's trials and noticing how we all have to find our own answers; we all have to learn how to show up and breathe without grasping for something to deliver us from our own pain. When you resist your own rawness and pain, you only create more pain for yourself.

It takes work sometimes, to love the people you trust, and to trust the people you love.

Here's the thing: being nice is worthless if you're just going to feel resentful about it in the end.

Come here, Cal," she says real gentle, and I come close. Read me something." I open up the book I'm holding, a new one brought this very day. Just chicken scratch, I used to figure, but now I see what's truly there, and I read a little out. That's gift enough," she says, and smiles so big, it makes me smile right back.

When you really love someone, you see all their mess and their brokenness and you love them anyway. In fact, seeing all of that sort of makes you love them more.

We're called to speak to people to whom we often don't feel like speaking; to refrain from surrounding ourselves with people "just like us," whose thoughts, ideas, and actions we can more or less manage and control; to share not just with the poor, but with the rich, the mediocre, the irritating, the Republicans, the Democrats, because we never know who the poor are. We never know whose heart is hemorrhaging. We never know who needs a kind work, a smile, a helping hand.

I didn't want to hear that people lived happily ever after. I wanted to know that other people suffered, too.

Even back then I understood the real purpose of literature. I didn't want to hear that people lived happily ever after. I wanted to know that other people suffered, too.

There is something about burying a friend that makes you want to declare what is most important to you in life, and if you're fortunate, that is true love.

Our hearts are every bit as malleable as stardust turned to gold. Loving one another polishes them.

Although our love was not quite devine the loss of it made me devine with empathy for you.

Be positive in all that you allow yourself to be, if you do not feel positive don't allow that self to be, instead transform into someone you want other people to be. Imagine you are like the you in heaven and heaven in others will come out of them to you.

There are few things love does not understand, how to love you is not one of them.

To fill the earth with love release your thoughts into positive streams.

Xavier wasn't put on the earth to witness the bad htings like Jules and I were. He had been put here to notice lovely things, things that God had created and no one had any complaints about. Leaves turning red in the autumn. How when the tide goes out, the shells are left on the shore. I was put here - Jules and I were both put here - to see sadder things. We had to stand in the rain and explain why the world was a lovely place.

A true friend reaches for your hand and touches your heart.

As children, we are profoundly loyal to our parents, and to their pain: I wanted to be related to my mom, not ruined by her

Unconditional love requires us to accept Billy for exactly who he is. He cannot be different at this present moment. He is perfectly normal based on his history.

It also takes allowing yourself to not take Billy's behavior personally or as disrespect to you as the authority figure. When a child (or adult) is in this state, no one else matters. It is a mindset about protecting the self. A teacher's ability to be "successful" with Billy comes through her ability to connect with him, despite her own internal reactions. Love is about taking the higher road.

Before you judge another remind yourself you don't know their life history to understand why they behave as they do!

But I was learning forgiveness didn't have to be about granting absolution for sins but being able to find freedom from pain.