Quotes About Empathy

No matter what your chosen topic of conversation, I cannot overstate the importance of being authentic when talking with someone. If you are not genuinely interested in what the other person is saying, no amount of planning or preparation will save you from a doomed conversation. Interest in someone else cannot be feigned.

Feel-good factor If you want a promotion but come across as aloof or reserved, you'll be overlooked in favor of someone who has warm "people skills"—skills that make others feel good about being around them.

You have to love men a lot," she once wrote. "A lot, a lot. You have to love men a lot. Otherwise they are simply unbearable.

We were taught not to offer or invite aid, because, like it or not, helping is a messy, confused proposition; sometimes you get it right and sometimes you get it wrong, and sometimes you have no choice but to trust that the man holding your tire iron, cussing at your old lug nuts, is a deeply kind human after all.

I recognized that I was small and soft; I wanted to believe in people - that they were kind and good, and given the chance, everything would turn out okay - but bad things do happen, and sometimes the best you can do is swim through them, focus, and years later say, Ya, I know that feeling, when some smart ass asks whether you've ever been so scared you wanted to pee your pants.

I wanted to say a lot but wasn't sure where to start; people don't want to hear about how your heart has melted into the dirt under your house.

Giving with no expectation of a return is the only way to give," he said. That is, of course, the absolute truth, although I had not thought of it before.

I was always decoding. I was hyperalert. Being hyperalert is a lasting thing. Being a watcher. Noticing emotional shirts, infinitesimally small tremors that flit over another person's face, the jab in a seemingly innocuous word, the quickening in a walk, an abrupt gesture - the way, say, a jacket is tossed over a chair.

Niczego równie trudno nie przebacza siÄ™ komuÅ›, co jego zalet.

When we know to read our own hearts, we acquire wisdom of the hearts of others.

Najsretniji je onaj ?ovjek koji je u?inio sretnima najviše ljudi.

In my writing, I want to be laid bare as a human being.

Talk into here. Talk into my bullet hole. Tell me I'm fine.

I knew that, but he didn't, and therefore I looked down into the great pity of a person's life on this earth. I don't mean that we all end up dead, that's not the great pity. I mean that he couldn't tell me what he was dreaming, and I couldn't tell him what was real.

Well, you were sad about the kids for a while, for a month, two months, three months. You're sad about the kids, sad about the animals, you don't do the women, you don't kill the animals, but after that you realize this is a war zone and everybody here lives in it. You don't care whether these people live or die tomorrow, you don't care whether you yourself live or die tomorrow, you kick the children aside, you do the women, you shoot the animals.

For his part he sensed with despair that he wouldn't come, no matter how long they kept at it. But this activity made him happy, he could stand here all night and offer pleasure to this other human being, this creature of form and flesh crying like an anvil.

Will you believe me when I tell you there was kindness in his heart? His left hand didn't know what his right hand was doing. It was only that certain important connections had been burned through. If I opened up your head and ran a hot soldering iron around in your brain, I might turn you into someone like that.

A smile is the light in your window that tells others that there is a caring, sharing person inside.

I had the blues because I had no shoes until upon the street, I met a man who had no feet ? Denis Waitley

Sometimes you just have to extend a little grace to people. Not because they deserve it - but because we don't deserve it either.

I often said the wrong thing–wake up, shut up, grow up. These are the wrong things to say when people are sad about some minor cruelty or sentimental incident.

There is a warmth and a comfort in hearing about people in worse situations than your own. Pity is a hollow virtue. I like it. It's a form of self-aggrandisement really, bigging yourself up by defining someone as below you. True-crime podcasts are usually great for that but sometimes you have to look really hard to find anyone down there.

Lovely thing about Adam, and why I loved him, was that he was kind to me when it mattered and he had seen a lot too. It's hard to be among vanilla bastards all the time. Normal people can get genuinely upset about a bad haircut, cross words, sick cats. It's hard not to roll your eyes and say the wrong thing.

It's primal, the need to tell. It's not about the listener but the storyteller. In some cultures, not telling your story is regarded as a sign of mental illness.