Quotes About Empathy

Librarians were like Mary Poppins to me. They always knew how to match a book to my mood, or to whatever I was going through at the time. I could always find peace in books.

Because I don't want to," I said. "Not because of the way she is now—I know that's not what she's like. There was no way it was going to be as easy as the notebook. I get that now.

You can tell a lot about a person by the way they treat animals.

I hope I never love someone so much that they could hurt me the way Langston was hurt, so wounded all he could do was cry and mope around the house and ask me to make him peanut butter and banana sandwiches with the crusts cut off, then play Boggle with him, which of course I always did, because I usually do whatever Langston wants me to do.

But, you see, that's the luxury of being a lout—you get to be selective about when you care and when you don't. The rest of us get stuck when your care goes shallow.

You have to understand they're operating from a place of fear, like Fox News viewers.

I feel like I know her. Really know her. And part of really knowing her is also knowing that I don't necessarily know her as well as I think I do. Which is okay. We should each have our own damn souls.

Being alone has nothing to do with how many people are around

We are protecting civilians. We are unarmed. We are no threat to you. Please do not shoot.

And I've learned that letting people get close to you doesn't always lead to pain. Some people are actually worth a risk.

Was it possible to measure what the heart felt?

I never understood how much responsability came with love.

Do you hear the argument the other side makes?

Two walls have dropped from between us: pride and justice. It no longer matters who was right. The Hippocratic oath has no place here - do no harm is the wrong standard for love. Everyone does harm.

If we looked through the eyes of history, we'd live differently. We'd live right.

Love has mass and volume. Put it into your life; it must displace something. As it has displaced my notion of what was good and important in the world, and substituted this: The knowledge that there is nothing more important than people willing to stand up for the truth of each other. The understanding of what it is to protect another fragile being. The understanding that I, too, will grow old.

Friendship is a physick all its own, and most especially to those such as we, who through the peculiar paths of our thinking must ever be lonely men.

Then must we abandon our accustomed notion of a woman's kindness, and forge a new one.

At times she could barely speak in response to the rabbi's questions. Other times she could hardly find enough breath for all the words she needed to utter, though the rabbi listened with great patience. On those days the new thoughts so brimmed in her that she felt the white plaster ceiling and the timbers and the brickwork walls couldn't contain her—should she raise her head to speak once more, she'd shake the house down.

Wounding and healing are not opposites. They're part of the same thing. It is our wounds that enable us to be compassionate with the wounds of others. It is our limitations that make us kind to the limitations of other people. It is our loneliness that helps us to to find other people or to even know they're alone with an illness. I think I have served people perfectly with parts of myself I used to be ashamed of.

The most basic and powerful way to connect to another person is to listen. Just listen. Perhaps the most important thing we ever give each other is our attention…. A loving silence often has far more power to heal and to connect than the most well-intentioned words.

Perhaps the most important thing we bring to another person is the silence in us, not the sort of silence that is filled with unspoken criticism or hard withdrawal. The sort of silence that is a place of refuge, of rest, of acceptance of someone as they are. We are all hungry for this other silence. It is hard to find. In its presence we can remember something beyond the moment, a strength on which to build a life. Silence is a place of great power and healing.

When we know ourselves to be connected to all others, acting compassionately is simply the natural thing to do.

It has been said that sometimes we need a story more than food in order to live. p 374