Quotes About Empathy

as Henry James had said in a letter to a do-gooding friend, "Only don't, I beseech you, generalize too much in these sympathies and tendernesses—remember that every life is a special problem which is not yours but another's, and content yourself with the terrible algebra of your own.

We tolerate difference only when we don't have to look at it or listen to it, as long as it doesn't impact our lives.

another wildly gesturing to her comatose baby and pleading for help

When something human is recorded, good travel writing happens.

what made this sense emphatic was that all this time, as the policeman was screaming, local people—slum dwellers, barefoot children, women with bundles—were passing by, glancing at me, and moving on. They knew what was happening

It is wrong to see a country in a bad mood: you begin to blame the country for your mood and to draw the wrong conclusions.

When something bad is done to me, I pretend that it happened a long time ago, to someone else.

If we expect compassion, we must be ready to offer compassion.

The one big difference between John and me, besides the fact that he's a boy and I'm a girl, is I have compassion.

I too have lost audience members. Six million have left the theater.

Some people were born unsupplied with a human conscience and those people needed killing.

It was true that she had been passed from hand to hand as often as were the prostitutes in brothels, so why should they treat her otherwise?

Who pities those who wait? They are easily recognized: by their gentleness, by their falsely attentive looks—attentive, yes, but to something other than what they are looking at—by their absentmindedness.

Covek ne voli zato sto zeli da ucini dobro, ili da pomogne, ili da zastiti nekoga. Ako tako postupamo, posmatramo svog bliznjeg kao puki objekat, a sami sebe dozivljavamo kao velikodusne i mudre osobe. To nema nikakve veze s ljubavlju. Voleti znaci ostvariti zajednistvo s drugim i otkriti u njemu bozansku iskru.

Our true friends are those who are with us when the good things happen. They cheer us on and are pleased by our triumphs. False friends only appear at difficult times, with their sad, supportive faces, when, in fact, our suffering is serving to console them for their miserable lives.

He knew one of the women well, and had shared his universe with her. They had seen the same mountains, and the same trees, although each of them had seem them differently. She knew his weaknesses, his moments of hatred, of despair. Yet she was there at his side. They shared the same universe.

Haven't you learned anything, not even with the approach of death? Stop thinking all the time that you're in the way, that you're bothering the person next to you. If people don't like it, they can complain. And if they don't have the courage to complain, that's their problem

We can never judge the lives of others, because each person knows only their own pain and renunciation.

Human beings can withstand a week without water, two weeks without food, many years of homelessness, but not loneliness. It is the worst of all tortures, the worst of all sufferings.

The most important thing in all human relationships is conversation, but people don't talk anymore, they don't sit down to talk and listen. They go to the theater, the cinema, watch television, listen to the radio, read books, but they almost never talk. If we want to change the world, we have to go back to a time when warriors would gather around a fire and tell stories.

The wise are wise only because they love. And the foolish are foolish only because they think they can understand love.

The lake was silent for some time. Finally, it said: I weep for Narcissus, but I never noticed that Narcissus was beautiful. I weep because, each time he knelt beside my banks, I could see, in the depths of his eyes, my own beauty reflected.

The universe only makes sense when we have someone to share our feelings with.

Beware when making a woman cry. God is counting her tears.