Quotes About Empathy

I think that's the biggest favor you can grant anyone, don't you? Permission to be dull. I know Henry will sometimes say something so utterly uninteresting that I could faint. And that's when you know you're in love; the tedium isn't unbearable, it's lovely.

Needing kindness myself, I am kinder now, and we get on amazingly well. [p. 110]

You can call it innocence or you can call it gullibility, but Celia made the most common mistake of the good-hearted: She assumed that everyone else was just like her. Evidence to the contrary found nowhere to lodge, like a book on chaos theory in a library that didn't have a physics section.

Dr. Rhinestein did not test for malice, for spiteful indifference, or for congenital meanness. If they could, I wonder how many fish we might throw back.

Bur Armenians have a talent for sorrow.

Like so many of our neighbors who latched onto tragedy to stand out from the crowd -- slavery, incest, a suicide -- I had exaggerated the ethnic chip on my shoulder for effect. I've learned since that tragedy is not to be hoarded. Only the untouched, the well-fed and contented, could possibly covet suffering like a designer jacket. I'd readily donate my story to the Salvation Army so that some other frump in need of color could wear it away.

A child needs your love most when he deserves it least -Erma Bombeck

In fact, because the unself-aware—which includes basically everybody—are impervious to uncharitable perceptions of their underlying motives, all these insights you have into people and what makes them tick are surprisingly useless.

Having buck teeth in junior high," she rounded up unsteadily, "must be ideal preparation for getting old. For pretty people, aging is a dumb shock. It's like, what's going on? Why doesn't anyone smile at me at checkout anymore? But it won't be a shock for me. It'll be, oh that. That again. Teeth.

So much lying in marriage is merely a matter of keeping quiet.

Over the years I observed Kevin watching decapitations, disembowelments, dismemberments, flayings, impalements, deoculations, and crucifixions, and I never saw him flinch. Because he'd mastered the trick. If you decline to identify, slice-and-dice is no more discomforting than watching your mother prepare beef stroganoff.

No tenemos mucho en común, pero, en general, disfruto con su compañía, la mera yuxtaposición de cuerpos calientes proporciona el más profundo de los consuelos animales.

You can call it innocence or you can call it gullibility, but Celia made the most common mistake of the good-hearted: She assumed that everyone else was just like her. Evidence to the contrary found nowhere to lodge, like a book on chaos theory in a library that didn't have a physics section.

But you said that if the U.S. were to fall or founder during your lifetime, collapse economically, be overrun by an aggressor, or corrupt from within into something vicious, you would weep. I

But since we've been separated, I may most miss coming home to deliver the narrative curiosities of my day, the way a cat might lay mice at your feet: the small, humble offerings that couples proffer after foraging in separate backyards.

Likewise, the simple adjacency of warm bodies supplies the deepest of animal comfort.

The romances between strangers are somewhere between inaccessible and incomprehensible to other people...

No obstante, incluso cuando los médicos se hacían los amables, no solían controlar el alcance de su capacidad para serlo. Por muy gentilmente que se expresaran, más de un mensaje de los que se veían obligados a comunicar era cruel, y si no, una mentira y, por tanto, aún más cruel. Personalmente Shep no entendía por qué alguien querría ser médico.

La idea es conseguir que quien compra tu libro se sienta un poco menos infeliz porque ahora sabe que es un infeliz, a diferencia de todos los demás, que son tan infelices que ni siquiera saben que lo son.

Y cómo se supone que uno puede ser «comprensivo» antes de comprender?

Maybe the greatest favor a spouse can tender is to overlook what you can't.

Mourning the death of strangers is a blunted butter knife experience, bearing no resemblance to the slicing, machete-like bereavement of losing someone you know.

Tiene miedo. —No me importa que tenga miedo por ti. Lo que sí me importa es que tenga miedo de ti.

Slapping his shoulder was probably a mistake; he flinched. And for the briefest of moments I appreciated what little access we ever had to what really went on in Kevin's head, since for a second the mask fell, and his face curdled with - well, with revulsion, I'm afraid. To allow even so brief a glimpse of its workings, he must have had other things on his mind.