Quotes About Empathy

Kindness is a language the dumb can speak and the deaf can hear and understand.

Before judging a person you have to know the story of his life.

La lanterne des autres ne sert qu'à nous égarer.

Another, more basic reason is that even being able to know or define in the first place what hurts or helps other people often itself requires reference to certain moral standards and understandings of what is good and bad.

Remaining unconscious about our innate needs takes an enormous emotional and physical toll on our bodies and spirits. Not recognizing our needs for rest, intimacy, touch, good nutrition, acknowledgment, and so on—and not knowing how to get these needs met directly—prevents us from being connected with our inner guidance.

So take a look at your own life. How many of your friends or, worse yet, family members, call you only when they want something or have a problem? Notice how these same people never call you just to check in on how you're doing.

Another example of how connected we all are, and are meant to be, is the story of the "elephant whisperer," the late Lawrence Anthony. He was a conservationist who saved the lives of countless elephants

emotional stress of those around them, as Colette Baron-Reid pointed out in her book Weight Loss for People Who Feel Too Much (Harmony, 2013).

Whenever you do something that you consider a mistake—like spilling something, tripping, forgetting an appointment, feeling sad, getting angry, or feeling stuck—notice it and congratulate yourself. This is so counterintuitive that it will instantly shift your energy.

Remember, they are born this way. Just as you didn't choose to be born as an empath, they didn't choose to be born with their personality. So the goal here isn't to judge them as evil or try to fix them. It is simply to avoid them, or at the very least, set up very healthy boundaries, and save yourself.

Your virtue is safe with me. Your discomfort is rather charming, actually, but I'm sure you'll get over it.

It takes more than Love and Passion to make a relationship work

My future daughter is not going to go through what I did.

I like the assumption that everyone is trying his best, and we should all just be kind to each other.

She knows too well what it's like to tamp down your natural inclinations, to force a smile when you feel numb. [...] The expression of emotion does not come naturally, so you learn to fake it. To pretend. To display an empathy you don't really feel. And so it is that you learn to pass, if you're lucky, to look like everyone else, even though you're broken inside.

So I am learning to pretend, to smile and nod, to display empathy I do not feel. I am learning to pass, to look like everyone else, even though I feel broken inside.

And so your personality is shaped. You know too much, and this knowledge makes you wary. You grow fearful and mistrustful. The expression of emotion does not come naturally, so you learn to fake it. To pretend. To display an empathy you don't actually feel. And so it is that you learn how to pass, if you're lucky, to look like everyone else, even though you're broken inside.

Each moment of loss, she has come to believe, contains within it the possibility of a new life. When the unimaginable happens, and your life changes irrevocably, you may find along with the pain a kind of grace. And in the place of certainty and fear—the fear of losing what you had—you are left with something startling: a depth of empathy, a quivering sensitivity to the world around you, and the unexpected blessing of gratitude for what remains.

Remember: eye contact," he says. "And be sure to smile." "You are such a mom." "You know what your problem is?" "That my boyfriend is acting like a mom?

Something in his manner makes me want to confide things to him I've never told anyone. Even painful things, shameful things. I didn't know how badly I wanted to share them.

I have seen people at their worst, at their most desperate and selfish, and this knowledge makes me wary. So I'm learning to pretend, to smile and nod, to display empathy I do not feel. I am learning to pass, to look like everyone else, even though I feel broken inside.

I think of what Mamey told me long ago: there are many ways to love and be loved. Too bad it's taken most of a lifetime for me to understand what that means.

What she wants most—what she truly yearns for—is what any of us want: to be seen.

The older I get, the more I believe that the greatest kindness