Quotes About Empathy

Be soft, be kind, be warm – you'll be happy.

Suffering toughens the spirit and tenderizes the soul.

Will you treat people who make you miserable, as prison guards, or travel agents?

When you're talking to Mike, you have his undivided attention and you feel like you're the most important person in his world.

I am so sorry for you, Leslie.' She said it like she really meant it. But not like she was completely surprised. 'And for him. Because he's lost you now.' This last part undid me. Despite her cruel criticism of me over the years, from where she sat, I was anyone and everyone's prize.

When deceit and attack become a regular part of marital interactions, there is no clear communication, no resolution to the problem, and no healing. It's impossible to have a close, loving relationship with someone you can't trust, can't talk with, or who won't take a look at himself when he hurts you.

Indifference says you are not a person to love, but an object to use.

Selfishness isn't characterized by knowing how you feel or what you want; selfishness is when you demand that other people always cater to your feelings, your wants, and your needs.

First we love within, then we love the world.

First we forgive ourselves, then we forgive others and life itself.

Perhaps it is a fault of the species who thrive in peace, mutual help, aspirations for more of the same -- to forget that outside these borders dwell very different types of mind, feeding on different fuel.

It's amazing what you find out about yourself when you write in the first person about someone very different from you.

I'm always astounded at the way we automatically look at what divides and separates us. We never look at what people have in common. If you see it, black and white people, both sides look to see the differences, they don't look at what they have together. Men and women, and old and young, and so on. And this is a disease of the mind, the way I see it. Because in actual fact, men and women have much more in common than they are separated.

Do you know what people really want? Everyone, I mean. Everybody in the world is thinking: I wish there was just one other person I could really talk to, who could really understand me, who'd be kind to me. That's what people really want, if they're telling the truth.

But one may acquire what MacIntyre calls a "second first language," a language which is learned in the same way that a child learns to use the native tongue. A missionary or an anthropologist who really hopes to understand and enter into the adopted culture will not do so by trying to learn the language in the way a tourist uses a phrasebook and a dictionary.

The ultimate sin of any performer is contempt for the audience.

The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you're uncool.

The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else while you're uncool.

Few, save the poor, feel for the poor.

Our own faults are those we are the first to detect, and the last to forgive, in others.

The good and the generous action of which we feel incapable is a reproach when done by another.

You ask yourself, "What would Jesus tweet?"

This is one of the dangers of sorrow: that in our grief for those who are gone we lose our interest in those who are living, and slacken our zeal in the work which is allotted to us.

But let us never forget that the source of helping other people must be victorious suffering.