Quotes About Empathy

so to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world.

How can you frighten a man whose hunger is not only in his own cramped stomach but in the wretched bellies of his children? You can't scare him—he has known a fear beyond every other.

You can't hate men if you know them.

in him kindness and conscience are so large that they are almost faults.

In every bit of honest writing in the world," he noted in a 1938 journal entry," . . . there is a base theme. Try to understand men, if you understand each other you will be kind to each other. Knowing a man well never leads to hate and nearly always leads to love. There are shorter means, many of them. There is writing promoting social change, writing punishing injustice, writing in celebration of heroism, but always that base theme. Try to understand each other.

Thy life is not thine own to govern, Danny, for it controls other lives. See how thy friends suffer! Spring to life, Danny, that thy friends may live again!

Horace Quinn remembered questioning Adam so very long ago, remembered him as a man in agony. He could still see Adam's haunted and horrified eyes. He had thought then of Adam as a man of such honesty that he couldn't conceive anything else. Adam had been set apart—an invisible wall cut him off from the world. You couldn't get into him—he couldn't get out to you. But in that old agony there had been no wall.

Guys like us are the loneliest in the world. No family. No place where we belong. Nothing to look forward to. We're different, we have a future. We have someone who gives a damn about us. I got you to look after me, and you got me to look after you and that's why.

Those people might have been murderers, sadists, brutes, ugly apish subhumans for all I knew, but I found myself thinking, "What charming people, what flair, how beautiful they are. How I wish I knew them." And all based on the delicious smell of soup.

Una's death struck Samuel like a silent earthquake. He said no brave and reassuring words, he simply sat alone and rocked himself.

Can you hear me, Father? Can you understand me?" The eyes did not change or move. "I did it," Cal cried. "I'm responsible for Aron's death and for your sickness. I took him to Kate's. I showed him his mother. That's why he went away. I don't want to do bad things—but I do them.

The sheriffs swore in new deputies and ordered new rifles; and the comfortable people in tight houses felt pity at first and then distaste, and finally hatred for the migrant people.

Don' keep ya guard up when nobody ain't sparrin' with ya.

Will you have a touch of ng-ka-py?" "You mean the drink that tastes of good rotten apples?" "Yes. I can talk better with it." "Maybe I can listen better," said Samuel.

If a story is not about the hearer he will not listen. And I here make a rule—a great and lasting story is about everyone or it will not last.

Books ain't no good. A guy needs somebody to be near him

There is one thing I don't think any one has ever set down although it is true—to a monster, everyone else is a monster.

When you know a friend is there you do not go to see him. Then he's gone and you blast your conscience to shreds that you did not see him.

They had spoken once, but there is not need for speech if it is only a habit anyway.

I wonder how many people I've looked at all my life and never seen." ? John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent

Sto imparando una cosa importante, disse. La sto imparando ogni momento, tutt'i giorni. Quando stai male o magari hai bisogno o sei nei guai... va' dalla povera gente. Soltanto loro ti danno una mano... soltanto loro.

When you're a child you're the centre of everything. Everything happens for you. Other people? They're only ghosts furnished for you to talk to. But when you grow up you take your place and you're your own size and shape. Things go out of you to others and come in from other people. It's worse, but it's much better too.

To a man born without conscience, a soul-stricken man must seem ridiculous.

Catherine was clever, but even a clever woman misses some of the strange corridors in a man.