Quotes About Empathy

I am always translating, he thinks: if not language to language, then person to person.

He wonders, why should my wife worry about women who have no sons? Possibly it's something women do: spend time imagining what it's like to be each other.

So much has been said between them that is is needless to add a marginal note. It is not for him now to gloss the text of their dealings, nor append a moral.

So much has been said between them that it is needless to add a marginal note. It is not for him now to gloss the text of their dealings, nor append a moral.

as a writer] you take up a life in your imagination, in which you can live all the other parts of yourself that you didn't become. And you can live in all the eras; the fact that you happened to be born in a certain place, in a certain dictate - the imagination doesn't accept these limitations.

Audley pats his arm. He wants to console him. But who can begin to do it? He si the inconsolable Master Cromwell: the unknowable, the inconstruable, the probably indefeasible Master Cromwell.

Wolsey always said, work out what people want, and you might be able to offer it; it is not always what you think, and may be cheap to supply.

He would like her to shorten her account, but he understands her need to tell it over, moment by moment, to say it out loud. It is like a package of words she is making, to hand to him: this is yours now.

How close we hug our enemies! They are our familiars, our other selves.

I can pity you, without entirely believing you.

Cromwell. I am not such a hard man that I don't see how you are left. Do you know what I say? I say I don't know one man in England who would have done what you have done, for a man disgraced and fallen. The king says so. Even him, Chapuys, the Emperor's man, he says, you cannot fault what's-he-called. I say, it's a pity you ever saw Wolsey. It's a pity you don't work for me." "Well," he says, "we all want

my great-aunts and uncles died in wards like those. Wrapping and muffling themselves, gazing at the long windows streaming rain, visitors would tell the patient: 'You're in the best place.

What kind of persons writes fiction about the past?" - "The kind of person for whom one lifetime is not enough." - Hilary Mantel

How can I give you nothing? Do you seriously expect me to buy nothing, wrap up nothing, stick a gift tag on nothing, send a card saying I really hope you like your nothing and lie awake worrying that the nothing I got you was the right color nothing you always anted? Have a heart!

He likes driving very fast on the wrong side of the road," said Sarah. "Which I can completely understand.

You can't be disgusting to people just because they annoy you!" she exclaimed very crossly. "Thousands of people annoy me! Millions of people annoy millions of people all the time! . . . You have to put up with them.

Very helpful, I must say. Look at them in the eye and shout, and they understand every word..." (Mr. Warbeck in Sienna, talking about local Italians.)

At the end of the day, you know, love does not happen between two perfect people as much as we would wish.

In nearly every religion I am aware of, there is a variation of the golden rule. And even for the non-religious, it is a tenet of people who believe in humanistic principles.

You don't walk away if you love someone. You help the person.

A psychologist once told me that for a boy being in the middle of a conflict between two women is the worst possible situation. There's always a desire to please each one.

The first lesson I've learned is that no matter what you do in your life, you have to figure out your own internal rhythms - I mean, what works for you doesn't necessarily work for your friend.

What is hateful to you do not do to your neighbor. That is the whole Torah. The rest is commentary.

The very worst thing, she was certain, was not human misery, but its nakedness, and the naked witness of others.