Quotes About Empathy

Vorrei che tu potessi ricordare come ci si sente quando si è donna, e come ci si sente quando non si è né uomo né donna. Solo "essere", prima di tutto, prima delle definizioni, dei pronomi personali, delle parole e dei generi. Forse, in questo modo, potresti anche arrivare, quasi per caso, alla possibilità primordiale di essere me

One of the greatest skills any leader can master is becoming comfortable with silence.

The primary urge that motivates and engenders writing...is the writer's desire to invent and tell a story, and to know himself. But the more I write, the more I feel the force of the other urge, which collaborates with and completes the first one: the desire to know the Other from within him. To feel what it means to be another person. To be able to touch, if only for a moment, the blaze that burns within another human being.

Tamar noticed that she had never met a person she felt so comfortable being silent with.

voglio che tu sappia tutto di me, voglio che tu mi conosca nella mia nudità, nei miei piccoli calcoli e nelle mie ansie meschine, nella mia stupidità, nelle mie vergogne e nella mia infamia.

The strange thing was, he wanted to like everyone. He just couldn't find a way to do it.

one understands nothing psychological unless one has experienced it oneself.

If he (George Keenan)felt on occasion more than a little uncomfortable when being listened to, then he was truly unhappy when not being listened to.

It's all very well to have a kind heart, but kind hearts don't rule castles.

Men and women should stay apart, till their hearts grow gentle towards one another again.

Numbness and cynicism, I suspect, are more often the products of frustrated compassion than of evil intentions.

What an artist is trying to do for people is bring them closer to something, because of course art is about sharing. You wouldn't be an artist unless you wanted to share an experience, a thought.

Listening is a positive act: you have to put yourself out to do it.

All the annoying stuff people spout about your loved ones being in a better place, or not being in pain is just words they say to make themselves feel better.

Nothing endears so much a friend as sorrow for his death. The pleasure of his company has not so powerful an influence.

Any pride or haughtiness, is displeasing to us, merely because it shocks our own pride, and leads us by sympathy into comparison, which causes the disagreeable passion of humility.

A gift of truth is the gift of love.

There are times when I can find myself in a book, too, for two or three hours. But afterward I have such an urge to go out and reach for other people. Very often they're not around. There's also a metaphysical loneliness. We all feel it. The burden of living one's own life is experiencing sensations that no one else can share. You take a step in a house, you start moving around the house, no one else moves with you. You're walking by yourself.

The fear of being vulnerable prompts me into bringing myself forward.

the Negro must come to the point of refusing to cooperate with evil," but without ever hating the evildoers. "I have no malice toward anyone, not even the white policeman who almost broke my arm, who choked and kicked me. Let there be no malice among you.

failure to respect the dignity and worth of all human personality.

Our lack of community is intensely painful. A TV talk show is not community. A couple of hours in a church pew each Sabbath is not community. A multinational corporation is neither a human nor a community, and in the sweatshops, defiled agribusiness fields, genetic mutation labs, ecological dead zones, the inhumanity is showing. Without genuine spiritual community, life becomes a struggle so lonely and grim that even Hillary Clinton has admitted "it takes a village".

I truly and deeply wanted to kill him. And I believe I could have done it, with nothing but my hands. But all of a sudden, out of nowhere, Peter had an arm around me. "Let it go, Kade," he was whispering very gently, though his arm was nearly crushing me. "Open your fists," he said, "and let go of the coals.

I'll just quote myself for now; actually, I'll quote what a good friend of mine, David Jenkins responded to a post I made when I was feeling 'pissy.' "Deep thoughts (come) from a deep well. Society is useful because when we see ourselves reflected through others we can gain a deeper understanding of ourselves." ~ David Jenkins, 2013