Quotes About Empathy

Once, when her brothers had been fighting over who got more spaghetti for dinner, her mother had said, You don't look at another person's plate to see if they have more than you. You look to see if they have enough.

sharing the past with someone is different from reliving it when you're alone. It feels less like a wound, more like a poultice.

We may not see eye to eye, but we can respect each other's opinions and find the truth in them. Perhaps in those honest conversations, instead of demonizing each other, we might see each other as imperfect humans, doing our best. —Jodi Picoult, March 2018

That what one person sees as a difference of opinion can be, to the other person, a sign of great disrespect.

If you take away anything from this novel, I hope it is an awareness of the cognitive and emotional intelligence of these beautiful animals—and the understanding that it is up to all of us to protect them.

I hated him. Not for fooling me into trusting him, or even for beating me. But because he made me lose the compassion I had for the enemy.

You trust someone who makes spaces for you in his or her life…so much so that if you leave, they will del the absence. You give someone your vulnerable, unshelled heart wrapped in a question: What will you do with it?

You learn how they live their lives, and you speak their language well enough to blend in with them. But how many white people you know who go out of their way to see Tyler Perry movies so they can learn how to act around Black people?

priest said, 'What he did was wrong. He doesn't deserve your love. But he does deserve your forgiveness, because otherwise he will grow like a weed in your heart until it's choked and overrun. The only person who suffers, when you squirrel away all that hate, is you.' I was thirteen, and I didn't know very much about the world, but I knew that if there was that much wisdom in religion, I wanted to be part of it.

But that's what love is, isn't it? When it hurts you more to see someone else suffer than it does to take the pain yourself?

My grandmother smiled, and that was all it took for me to stop seeing the scar, and to recognize her again. "Yes," she said. "But see how much of me is left?

Be a mensch, my mother told me, no matter what situation you're in. Be kind to others before you take care of yourself; make whoever you're with feel like they matter.

There's nothing worse than silence, strung like heavy beads on too delicate a conversation.

Let me tell you this: if you meet a loner, no matter what they tell you, it's not because they enjoy solitude. It's because they have tried to blend into the world before, and people continue to disappoint them. 'Then why are you here?

Forgiving isn't something you do for someone else. It's something you do for yourself. It's saying, 'You're not important enough to have a stranglehold on me.' It's saying, 'You don't get to trap me in the past. I am worthy of a future

If you forgive people enough, you belong to them, and they to you, whether either person likes it or not--squatter's rights of the heart. -James Hamilton

It makes me wonder how I'd be treated if I were like everyone else. Maybe I'm a pretty rotten person, not that anyone would ever have the guts to tell me this to my face. Maybe everyone thinks I'm rude or ugly or stupid but they have to be nice because it could be the circumstances of my life that make me that way.

It turns out that sharing the past with someone is different from reliving it when you're alone. It feels less like a wound, more like a poultice.

It turned out people truly did cry into their coffee cups.

I started to wonder what it might have felt like to live your life in a place someone else had carved.

What she really meant was: here is my heart, have a care.

But forgiving isn't something you do for someone else. It's something you do for yourself.

You don't rough them up.

What no one told me about grief is how lonely it is. No matter who else is mourning, you're in your own little cell. Even when people try to comfort you, you're aware that now there is a barrier between you and them, made of the horrible thing that happened, that keeps you isolated.