Quotes About Empathy

I don't want to have to tell them that my life lost all its meaning when they died. They loved me, and they wouldn't want that.

Life gives us pain. Our job is to experience it when it gets handed to us. Avoidance of loss has a cost. Having our pain seen and seeing the pain in others is a wonderful medicine for both body and soul.

I could blame everyone else for not feeling the pain I felt, or I could feel my own grief without any expectations about how anyone else should feel. I could have gratitude for whatever kindness people extended to me, while recognizing that they could not be expected to share my feelings. This was my tragedy, not theirs. I thought of the Auden poem "Musée des Beaux Arts," about suffering "while someone else is eating or opening a window.

After all my years working with the dying and the grieving, I have found that in this lifetime, the ultimate meaning we find is in everyone we have loved.

The fourteen-year-old Carmack was sent for psychiatric evaluation to help determine his sentence. He came into the room with a sizable chip on his shoulder. The interview didn't go well. Carmack was later told the contents of his evaluation: "Boy behaves like a walking brain with legs . . . no empathy for other human beings.

Just because you are dealing with difficult people does not mean that you must become like them.

I wanted to talk to someone. But who? It's moments like this, when you need someone the most, that your world seems smallest.

I notice you, I want to say. Even when no one else does, I do. I will.

You don't know me. You know one me, just like I know one you. And you can't know every me, and I can't know every you.

Sometimes when you hit send, you can imagine the message going straight into the person's heart. But other times, like this time, it feels like the words are merely falling into a well.

underneath all that denial, you're someone who's deeply, deeply nice.

Part of love is letting a person be who they want to be

Now, I don't believe in doing hugs halfway. I can't stand people who try to hug without touching. A hug should be a full embrace - as I wrap my arms around Tony, I am not just holding him, but also trying to lift off his troubles for a moment so that the only thing he can feel is my presence, my support.

Maybe that's it, [...] [w]ith what you were talking about before. The world being broken. Maybe it isn't that we're supposed to find the pieces and put them back together. Maybe we're the pieces. [...] Maybe [...] what we're supposed to do is come together. That's how we stop the breaking.

What separates us from the animals, what separates us from the chaos, is our ability to mourn people we've never met.

Just because a person is beautiful doesn't mean there's no soul beneath. Doesn't mean that person hasn't suffered like everyone else, doesn't mean they don't hope to still be a good human being in an awful world.

I want you to be honest with me. Even if it hurts. Although I would prefer for it not to hurt.

what i really want - and what i never get - is to be appreciated. do you know what it's like to work so hard to make sure everyone's happy, and to have not a single person recognize it

It is hard to stop seeing your son as a son and to start seeing him as a human being. It is hard to stop seeing your parents as parents and to start seeing them as human beings. It's a two-sided transition, and very few people manage it gracefully.

I wonder if it's possible to have happiness without it being at someone else's expense.

There is always something new to learn about the person you love.

And maybe it is only by finding yourself that you can feel the true intensity of becoming close to another person.

If other people see you differently, you'll end up seeing them differently, too.

He says presents aren't important, but I think they are - not because of how much they cost, but for the opportunity they provide to say I understand you.