Quotes About Empathy

The final test of a gentleman is his respect for those who can be of no possible service to him.

I can't give people back their loved ones. I can't restore their happiness or innocence, can't give back their lives the way they were. But I can give them the truth. Then they will be free to grieve for the dead, and then free to start living again. Truth like that can be a humbling and sacred gift for a scientist to give.

The same was true of the most popular girls. They had no empathy, no compassion for more normal kids.

I never know whether to pity or congratulate a man on coming to his senses.

Except for the young or very happy, I can't say I am sorry for anyone who dies.

Life is a mirror: if you frown at it, it frowns back; if you smile, it returns the greeting.

Never lose a chance of saying a kind word.

The world is a looking-glass, and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face. Frown at it, and it will in turn look sourly upon you; laugh at it and with it, and it is a jolly kind companion; and so let all young persons take their choice.

it is the ordinary lot of people to have no friends if they themselves care for nobody

What you say about me, you're really saying about yourself.

There was somebody screaming somewhere, and she kept wondering who it could be. She turned to the people who watched her and said in a lost, chiding voice, "Quit screaming, please! Screaming doesn't help!" She closed her eyes and leaned against the fence; and then she knew the person screaming was herself.

And part of growin' up is learnin' to see the world through other men's eyes.

How do we love all children, of all species, of all time?

Writing is a way of sharing our humanity.

I believe we are most alive when we are being thought about by others who love us.

Growing up, I saw my dad do charity work for children with health issues. That had a profound effect on me.

Some writers, no matter how good they are, can't speak to us. Something about the way they see the world, I think, string sentences together, alienates us as surely as the ramblings of a madman on a bus.

I desire the company of a man who could sympathize with me, whose eyes would reply to mine... gentle yet courageous, possessed, has a cultivated as well as a capacious mind, whose tastes are like my own to approve or amend my plans.' Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, 1819

And so he set about restoring them, using the tricks he had learned over the years. He went to them, speaking to each of them in tones so low that none of the others could hear, getting their names, gently touching them, asking about their pains, their fears, gently eliciting their stories, reminding them of why they had run in the first place.

no amount of scholastic attainment, of able and profound exposition of brilliant and stirring eloquence can atone for the absence of a deep impassioned sympathetic love for human souls.

Friendship allows you to see your own life but with a second sympathetic self.

Friends usually bring out better versions of each other. People feel unguarded and fluid with their close friends.

It is possible to have a complex human relationship without words

I think the rampant individualism of our current culture is a catastrophe. The emphasis on self—individual success, self-fulfillment, individual freedom, self-actualization—is a catastrophe.