Quotes About Empathy

I suggest that it never helps anyone to tell a mother that her baby is ugly.

Treat people magnanimously if you can," he said, "It'll make you feel better. Expect nothing and you won't be disappointed. Do the decent thing if you can, but for its own sake.

She is what I feel to be a good person in the word's simplest and plainest meaning. Which includes lashing out with her claws on some occasions when others may consider it improper—I don't give a damn whether Ginny is "proper" or not; I like her. I like her values.

The great enemy of communication, we find, is the illusion of it. We have talked enough; but we have not listened. And by not listening we have failed to concede the immense complexity of our society—and thus the great gaps between ourselves and those with whom we seek understanding.

Blessed are they who heal you of self-despisings. Of all services which can be done to man, I know of none more precious.

As we learn about each other, so we learn about ourselves

There are no rules for friendship. It must be left to itself. We cannot force it any more than love.

Just as much as we see in others we have in ourselves.

I like a friend the better for having faults that one can talk about.

The least pain in our little finger gives us more concern and uneasiness than the destruction of millions of our fellow-beings.

A gentle word, a kind look, a good-natured smile can work wonders and accomplish miracles.

Man is, so to speak, an endless and infinitely varied repetition: and if we know what one man feels, we so far know what a thousand feel in the sanctuary of their being. Our feeling of general humanity is at once an aggregate of a thousand different truths, and it is also the same truth a thousand times told.

Books let us into their souls and lay open to us the secrets of our own.

Now that we are cool, he said, and regret that we hurt each other, I am not sorry that it happened.

Still, I have felt it better to have a dog about the place. They are wonderful creatures.

Too many people don't care what happens so long as it doesn't happen to them.

Dostoevsky's...typically Russian emphasis on man as a collective being leads logically to his belief in our all-guilt; we are, again, in some mysterious manner, guilty of everybody's sins...Our own deeds, good or bad, are nothing but pebbles in the river of life that will be carried on and on until they somehow touch our remotest fellow man.

Being a father, being a friend, those are the things that make me feel successful.

True religion... is giving and finding one's happiness by bringing happiness into the lives of others.

Your greatness is measured by your kindness.

I marveled silently at how dog people immediately relate to one another, openly and with some sort of dog-person warranty that you're trustworthy and decent human beings. Yes, subservient and somewhat soft in the head, but inherently good nonetheless.

One hearty laugh together will bring enemies into a closer communion of heart than hours spent on both sides in inward wrestling with the mental demon of uncharitable feeling.

Whenever you're in conflict with someone, there is one factor that can make the difference between damaging your relationship and deepening it. That factor is attitude.

The first thing to learn in intercourse with others is noninterference with their own peculiar ways of being happy, provided those ways do not assume to interfere by violence with ours.