Quotes About Empathy

The basis of all animal rights should be the Golden Rule: we should treat them as we would wish them to treat us, were any other species in our dominant position

All people want to be touched. —Diana

You can't comfort the afflicted," the note read, "without afflicting the comfortable.

I thought that would be kind of cool, to make a bad guy look sympathetic.

Sometimes you've got to be able to listen to yourself and be okay with no one else understanding.

Jarrod frowned like he felt bad for me, and I thought I saw maybe even a hint of tears in his eyes, like he was attending the funeral of a good friend who had died in an accident, and was looking down at his dead body, thinking, That's not him, the way I'd thought when I saw my grandmother in her casket, all made up with colors she'd have never chosen for herself had she been alive.

Being in love isn't irrational, he said. It only looks like that to people who have never felt it.

If oppression produced saints, we'd want everyone to be oppressed.

Most straight people, and many gay people, especially those who came of age more recently, don't understand how momentous and difficult coming out was to men and women of this generation. It seems so obvious now, so banal.

Love Is: being able to keep your fucking mouth shut.

Friends don't keep score,

Perhaps, after all, the most beautiful words in the language are I'm sorry.

True insight comes from standing in solidarity with victims.

The best vantage point for clarifying one's moral responsibility when harm has occurred is in the dirt and blood alongside the wounded party, not at the safe distance of a detached jurist debating the details of the relevant legislation.

We are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway.

Significantly, "compassion" in Luke's Gospel is used only of God (1:78, cf. 1:50, 54) and of Jesus (7:13), and of the two most extraordinary parabolic characters of all: the father of the Prodigal Son (15:20) and the Good Samaritan (10:33).21

The law has no compassion. And justice is administered without compassion.

Often as a child you see someone with a learning disability or Down's Syndrome and my mum and dad were always very quick to explain exactly what was going on and to be in their own way inclusive and welcoming.

If only inflicted pain could be as contagious As a plague, you might use it more sparingly.

She has never learnt to yawn And so she hasn't the smallest comprehension Of those who can.

A moment of self-compassion can change your entire day. A string of such moments can change the course of your life.

That was when he'd fully understood that neither of them had every understood the other. A marriage couldn't survive that sort of epiphany, and their had been over just a few weeks later.

Millions of people around the world learned to speak English as a second or third language, or sixth, and fluently. He'd always thought they envied his country, maybe wanted to live there, but now he wondered if they just liked English-language movies and TV shows. And maybe, just maybe, they learned English because most English speakers were too lazy or arrogant to become proficient in other languages.

There were certain keys to being a good friend, chief among them loyalty, shared philosophy, and willing sacrifice, but Teig had learned that the most appreciated trait in a friend was knowing when to speak up and when to keep silent.