Quotes About Empathy

Did you ever tread on your partner's dress at a dance - I'm speaking now of the days when women wore dresses long enough to be trodden on - and hear it rip and see her smile at you like an angel and say, Please don't apologise. It's nothing, and then suddenly meet her clear blue eyes and feel as if you had stepped on the teeth of a rake and had the handle jump up and hit you in the face?

There are certain moments in life when words are not needed. I looked at Biffy, Biffy looked at me. A perfect understanding linked our two souls. ? !

Now look here, old friend, I said. I know your bally heart is broken and all that, and at some future time I shall be delighted to hear all about it, but - I didn't come to talk about that. No? Good egg! The past, said young Bingo, is dead. Let us say no more about it. Right-o! I have been wounded to the very depths of my soul, but don't speak about it. I won't. Ignore it. Forget it. Absolutely! I hadn't seen him so dashed reasonable for days.

I hardly knew what to do. I wanted, of course, to rush down to Washington Square and grip the poor blighter silently by the hand; and then, thinking it over, I hadn't the nerve. Absent treatment seemed the touch. I gave it him in waves.

If I meet a bird, I wave a friendly hand at it, to let it know that I wish it well, but I don't want to crouch behind a bush observing its habits.

The ideal girl . . . would be kind. That was because she would also be extremely intelligent, and, being extremely intelligent, would have need of kindness to enable her to bear with a not very intelligent man like himself.

The whole wheeze in married life, he had come to learn, was to give the opposite number as few opportunities of saying 'Oh, how could you?' as possible.

She was a kind-hearted girl, and it irked her to have to be continually acting as a black frost in Freddie's garden of dreams.

What if he does think you the world's premier louse? Don't we all?

Bertie, old man, said young Bingo earnestly, for the last two weeks I've been comforting the sick to such an extent that, if I had a brother and you brought him to me on a sick-bed at this moment, by Jove, old man, I'd heave a brick at him.

As we grow older and realize more clearly the limitations of human happiness, we come to see that the only real and abiding pleasure in life is to give pleasure to other people. One

In the past she had been compelled to describe this man as a hunk of cheese and to express the opinion that his crookedness was such as to enable him to hide at will behind a spiral staircase; but now, in the joy of this unexpected reunion, all these harsh views were forgotten.

One of the many things Mike could never understand in Psmith was his fondness for getting into atmospheres that were not his own. He would go out of his way to do this. Mike, like most boys of his age, was never really happy and at his ease except in the presence of those of his own years and class. Psmith, on the contrary, seemed to be bored by them, and infinitely preferred talking to somebody who lived in quite another world.

I was exercised about the poor fish, as I am about all my pals, close or distant, who find themselves treading upon Life's banana skins.

Give me your hand out of the depths sown by your sorrows.

Give me, for my life, all lives, give me all the pain of everyone, I'm going to turn it into hope. Give me all the joys, even the most secret, because otherwise how will these things be known? I have to tell them, give me the labors of everyday, for that's what I sing.

I have been a lucky man. To feel the intimacy of brothers is a marvelous thing in life. To feel the love of people whom we love is a fire that feeds our life. But to feel the affection that comes from those whom we do not know, from those unknown to us, who are watching over our sleep and solitude, over our dangers and our weaknesses – that is something still greater and more beautiful because it widens out the boundaries of our being, and unites all living things.

I am everybody and every time, I always call myself by your name.

No, my dog used to gaze at me, paying me the attention I need, the attention required to make a vain person like me understand that, being a dog, he was wasting time, but, with those eyes so much purer than mine, he'd keep on gazing at me with a look that reserved for me alone all his sweet and shaggy life, always near me, never troubling me, and asking nothing.

De pronto no puedo decirte lo que yo te debo decir, hombre,perdóname; sabrás que aunque no escuches mis palabras no me eché a llorar ni a dormir y que contigo estoy sin verte desde hace tiempo y hasta el fin. I can't just suddenly tell you what I should be telling you, friend, forgive me; you know that although you don't hear my words, I wasn't asleep or in tears, that I am with you without seeing you for a good long time and until the end.

Porque sentí que de alguna manera Compartí lo que hacían O mis hermanos o mis enemigos: Y ellos, de tanta nada que saqué De la nada, de la nada mía, Tomaron algo y les sirvió mi vida...

And I watch my words from a long way off.. They are more YOURS than mine.. They climb on my old suffering like ivy...

To feel the intimacy of brothers is a marvelous thing in life. To feel the love of people whom we love is a fire that feeds our life. But to feel affection that comes from those whom we do not know, from those unknown to us, who are watching over our sleep and solitude, over our dangers and our weaknesses---that is something still greater and more beautiful because it widens out the boundaries of our being and unites all living things.

Give me the sorrow of the entire world, I will turn it into hope.