Quotes About Empathy

Myself, after having not a child but this particular one, I couldn't see how anyone could claim to love children in the generic any more that anyone could credibly claim to love people in a sufficiently sweeping sense as to embrace Pol Pot, Don Rickles, and an upstairs neighbor who does 2,000 jumping jacks at three in the morning.

Nothing is interesting of you're not interested. In vain, I had been waiting for Kevin to price out, to demonstrate as I stood arms folded that he was worthy of my ardor. That was too much to demand of a little boy, who would only be as lovable to me as I allowed him to be. It was past time that I at least met Kevin halfway.

You can only subject people to anguish who have a conscience. You can only punish people who have hopes to frustrate or attachments to sever; who worry what you think of them. You can really only punish people who are already a little bit good.

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.

It's far less important to me to be liked these days than to be understood.

The existence of other people is essentially awkward.

We who are liberal and progressive know that the poor are our equals in every sense except that of being equal to us.

As I say the words, I realize how true they are. And maybe that's the trick to getting through it, through life: realizing that everybody, including ourselves, is lugging around some kind of screwed-up baggage. Maybe we are put here to help each other carry the loads.

Elaine, I remember the first time I met you. You were so young, so scared. It nearly broke my heart to see you so.

I do not understand it, this fighting and killing/ and urge to conquer." His gaze turned downward then. I touched his arm, and he glanced at me, all the sorrow on this earth filling his eyes then. "I will never understand it.

I'm probably getting too familiar with him, but there's something about him that makes me feel like I would tell him anything. He asks these incredibly direct questions, things that some of my closest friends have never even thought to ask, and I'm inexplicably compelled to share all these deeply personal thoughts. He's like human Xanax or something.

I've come to learn over my years of practice, which is that having a delicate conversation with a teenager is like trying to talk with someone on the other side of a door.

if you feel you must criticize your daughter's friends—and sometimes you must—use your words and your tone to communicate that the girls are in a tricky situation, not that they are bad people.

Girls will often set aside their own wishes to help a needy friend.

People don't do nice things for people who are mean to them. Better for your daughter to learn this lesson before she leaves your home than after she is out on her own.

Few moments in life spark more maturation than when a young person recognizes that her parents have strengths and limitations that were in place long before she came along and that will be there long after she moves out. In letting go of the dream of turning you into the perfect parent, your daughter recovers a lot of energy that has been devoted to being angry with you, feeling hurt by you, or trying to change you.

In good marriages, partners can help their children appreciate what they should and shouldn't take personally in the other parent's behavior. My husband has told our daughters that I've been clean crazy for as long as he's known me and that he stopped taking it personally years ago.

Research shows that teens with empathetic parents actually have lower levels of systemic inflammation—a biological marker of emotional stress—but we tend to breeze right past offering empathy and instead serve up reassurance.

Not all scars show. Not all wounds heal. Sometimes you can't see, the pain someone feels.

Dying for someone is easy." J.T. murmured now; as if reading my mind."Living for yourself, that's hard.

Because sometimes pain is knowing, and sometimes pain is sharing that knowledge with someone who loves you but can't do anything to help.

Wer ein Menschenleben rettet, handelt, als würde er die ganze Welt retten.

Everyone deserves a sad day once in a while," Calista told me. "Sometimes things are too big for cheering up. Sometimes the best way to make things better is just to let yourself be sad for a little bit.

Trying hard and being a good person didn't always mean good things would happen to you. But it did mean that others might try on your behalf.