Quotes About Empathy

It is both a blessing And a curse To feel everything So very deeply.

He thought it disproportionate in its violence considering the fragility of us.

Why did I write this? " Although I desire that all kinds of readers enjoy my novel, my deepest wish is that it finds those readers that really need it. In a way like when I re-read The Outsiders countless times during reading time in the fourth grade or when I read Kerouac's book is in high school.

Empathy's not standing over a hole looking down and saying you understand. Empathy is having been in that hole yourself.

It's funny how it only takes one person taking the time to show you they care for all that bad shit to not seem so bad for a moment. It's not like the demons go anywhere. What haunts you is still right there when you go back under, but that one gesture from one person can bring you to the surface for a second or two. And for a very long time, all I'd really needed was to come up for air.

I will be merciful, and I will believe in people. If I am to err, I will err on the side of mercy. I will give people the benefit of the doubt. I will bend, but not break, in order to give people the opportunity to grow and develop.

A worry shared is a worry doubled, not halved.

Each person's grief is as unique as their fingerprint. But what everyone has in common is that no matter how they grieve, they share a need for their grief to be witnessed. That doesn't mean needing someone to try to lessen it or reframe it for them. The need is for someone to be fully present to the magnitude of their loss without trying to point out the silver lining.

I guess the real question is, Why not me? Why did I think I was going to get through this life without sorrow, pain, or grief?

I'd used people's stories and their lives to bolster my political arguments for changing welfare. Now, however, I was running into the people themselves, and I realized that using anyone's tragedy for political gain was cowardly.

Reading is an act of contemplation, perhaps the only act in which we allow ourselves to merge with the consciousness of another human being. We possess the books we read, animating the waiting stillness of their language, but they possess us also, filling us with thoughts and observations, asking us to make them part of ourselves.

Think about it: when we read, we soul travel, in the sense that we join, or enter, the consciousness of another human. We empathize—we have to—because our experience is enlarged.

Reading is, by its nature, a strategy for displacement, for pulling back from the circumstances of the present and immersing in the textures of a different life.

Reading is a form of self-identification that works, paradoxically, by encouraging us to identify with others, an abstract process that changes us in the most concrete of ways.

Are you insane?" "Probably, yes," she said. "Empathy deficit disorder. Excessive violence. Something along those lines.

The dignity of a society is defined by the way it looks after its weakest members.

the one who hates men who…" "…hate women.

He understood immediately, and asked, 'What about the fire the dragon is breathing?' I said it was the same fire that burns inside everyone who is being trampled on. The same fire that can turn us into ashes and waste, but which sometimes, if some old fool like Holger spots us, plays chess with us and talks to us and just takes an interest, can become something totally different: a force which allows us to strike back.

If joy could express itself with the same force as pain,

Maybe a few fabulous drawings were nothing as compared to being able to ask for a glass of milk, or exchange a few words with a friend, or a father. What did he know?

C'est sa grande recette de créativité. Par tolérance, il signifie que les idées différentes et les gens différents méritent d'être entendus. Plus on est ouvert aux individus qui sortent de la norme, ou simplement aux minorités, plus on est réceptif aux pensées nouvelles.

If joy could express itself with the same force as pain," he said.

Those who are really responsible for suffering in the world couldn't care less. It's the ones fighting for good who are consumed by remorse.

That is no doubt the disadvantage of having intelligent friends. They see straight through you.