Quotes About Empathy

And Agnes finds she can bear anything except her child's pain. She can bear separation, sickness, blows, birth, deprivation, hunger, unfairness, seclusion, but not this: her child, looking down at her dead twin. Her child, sobbing for her lost brother. Her child, racked with grief.

She is like no one you have ever met. She cares not what people may think of her. She follows entirely her own course." He sits forward, placing his elbows on his knees, dropping his voice to a whisper. "She can look at a person and see right into their very soul. There is not a drop of harshness in her. She will take a person for who they are, not what they are not or ought to be." He glances at Eliza. "Those are rare qualities, are they not?

He has, Agnes sees, done what any father would wish to do, to exchange his child's suffering for his own, to take his place, to offer himself up in his child's stead so that the boy might live. She will say all this to her husband, later, after the play has ended, after the final silence has fallen, after the dead have sprung up to take their places in the line of players at the edge of the stage.

I mean', he says, 'that I don´t think you have any idea what it is like to be married to someone like you.' 'Like me?' 'Someone who knows everything about you, before you even know it yourself. Someone who can just loo at you and divine your deepest secrets, just with a glance. Someone who can tell what you are about to say- and what you might not- before you say it. It is' he says, 'both a joy and a curse.

In their apartment, he lets her take his hand, lets her lead him from the fire to a chair, lets his eyes lose focus, lets her rub her fingers through his hair, and she can feel him switch from one character to another; she can sense that other, big-house, self melt off him, like wax sliding from a lit candle, revealing the man within.

Whoever it used to belong to wishes her

Eliza doesn't say that she worries about Anne, all alone, so young, without her, wherever she may be. That for a long time she lay awake at night, whispering her name, just in case she was listening, from wherever she was, in case the sound of Eliza's voice was a comfort to her. The pain of wondering if Anne was distressed somewhere and that she, Eliza, was unable to hear her, unable to reach her.

She sees the cloud above him grow darker, gather its horrible rank strength. She wants to reach across the table then, to lay her hand on his arm. She wants to say, I am here. But what if her words are not enough? What if she is not enough of a salve for his nameless pain? For the first

time in her life, she finds she does not know how to help someone. She does not know what to do. And

Cuando mira a alguien le ve hasta el fondo del alma. No hay ni una gota de hostilidad en ella. Se toma a las personas por lo que son, no por lo que deberían ser. —Observa a Eliza—. Son cualidades poco comunes, ¿verdad?

He has, Agnes sees, done what any father would wish to do, to exchange his child's suffering for his own, to take his place, to offer himself up in his child's stead so that the boy might live.

I have a theory,' she says, looking far ahead, at where salt meets sky, 'that marriages end not because of something you did say but because of something you didn't. All you have to do now is work out what it is.

There is so much to do in a family of this size, so much to see to, so many people needing so many different things. How easy is it, Agnes thinks, as she lifts the plates, to miss the pain and anguish of one person, if that person keeps quiet, if he keeps it all in, like a bottle stoppered too tightly, the pressure inside building and building, until – what?

She wouldn't let go of the baby,' her grandmother says suddenly. 'Who?' Iris pounces. 'Esme?' Her grandmother's eyes are focused somewhere beyond the window. 'They had to sedate her. She wouldn't let go.

That had done it. Esme had turned at that one. She had snatched up the protractor of Catriona McFarlane, high priestess of the tittering club, and pointed it at her like a divining rod. 'You know what you are, Catriona McFarlane?' Esme had said. 'You are a sad creature. You are mean-spirited, soulless. You are going to die alone and lonely. Do you hear me?

When he took my hand he taught me something about the value of touch, the communicative power of the human hand.

It is in such small acts of kindness that people know they are loved. Which

couldn't have my happiness made out of a wrong—an unfairness—to somebody else . . . What sort of a life could we build on such foundations? —EDITH WHARTON

I couldn't have my happiness made out of a wrong—an unfairness—to somebody else . . . What sort of a life could we build on such foundations? —EDITH WHARTON

A wound inflicted by arrows heals, a wood cut down by an axe grows, but harsh words are hateful?a wound inflicted by them does not heal. Arrows of different sorts can be extracted from the body, but a word-dart cannot be drawn out, for it is seated in the heart.

An evil-minded man is quick to see His neighbour's faults, though small as mustard seed; But when he turns his eyes towards his own, Though large as bilva fruit, he none descries.

Do naught to others which, if done to thee, would cause thee pain: this is the sum of duty.*

Enjoy thou the prosperity of others, Although thyself unprosperous; noble men Take pleasure in their neighbours? happiness.

Let none with scorn a suppliant meet, Or from the door untended spurn A dog; an outcast kindly treat; And so thou shalt be blest in turn.