Quotes About Empathy

there was real pain in the world, right this very moment people were suffering unimaginable atrocities and you couldn't close your heart completely, but you couldn't leave it wide open either, because otherwise how could you possibly live your life, when through pure, random luck you got to live in paradise? You had to register the existence of evil, do the little that you could, and then close your mind and think about new shoes.

Friendship is the only cure for hatred, the only guarantee of peace. —Buddhist quote on Ellen O'Farrell's notice board

le hubiera leído el pensamiento.

They should move gingerly through their days, as if they had spinal cord injuries.

How sweet it is when the strong are also gentle!

Approaching human life from the neutral sea was beginning to make me more appreciative.

I am convinced that we not only love ourselves in others, but hate ourselves in others too.

What we are able to judge with feeling is very little; the rest is all prejudice and complaisance.

How happily some people would live if they troubled themselves as little about other people's business as about their own.

How few friends would remain friends if each could see the sentiments of the other in their entirety.

It is a question whether, when we break a murderer on the wheel, we do not fall into the error a child makes when it hits the chair it has bumped into.

In every man there is a little of all men.

Toddlers who don't learn gradually about disappointment lose their resilience through lack of practice in give-and-take with other people's needs. They can become self-centered, demanding, and difficult to like or to be with.

We can find reasons to dislike anyone. But it's what you focus on and appreciate in a person that cultivates a positive relationship.

The reason why we often get poor advice is that it's hard to find a person who always has our best interest at heart, isn't envious in any way, and at no level thinks he knows what's best for you.

Consider, for example, lust versus love. When we lust after someone or something, we think in terms of what they (or it) can do for us. When we love, however, our thoughts are immersed in what we can give to someone else. Giving makes us feel good, so we do it happily. But when we lust, we only want to take. When someone we love is in pain, we feel pain. When someone whom we lust is in pain, we only think in terms of what that loss or inconvenience means to us.

When a person gives, he loves the object of his giving more -- and so love is planted and grows.

By building relations we create a source of love and personal pride and belonging that makes living in a chaotic world easier.

Se há tantas cabeças quantas são as maneiras de pensar, há de haver tantos tipos de amor quantos são os corações.

We live in a highly polarized society. We need to try to understand each other in respectful ways. To that end, I believe that we should make room for both spiritual atheists and thinking believers.

Too often, the anthropologist takes on the role of police detective, discovering what is "hidden," assembling "evidence" to make a strong "case"... But sometimes what is called for is not an "investigator" at all, but an attentive listener.

Ill take my heart out and hand it to you.

If everyone was like you the World would be a better place.

A lot of women don't know how to love because there's deep reasons for them not knowing how to love. And what I mean by deep reasons is deep and dark reasons.