Quotes About Empathy

Physical love, so unfairly disparaged, compels people to manifest the very smallest particles they possess of goodness, of self-abnegation, so much so that these particles glow even in the eyes of those immediately surrounding them.

I had allowed myself to murmur a few impatient and hurtful words, which, I had sensed from the way her face contracted, had struck home, had wounded her; it was I whom they were lacerating, now that the consolation of a thousand kisses was forever impossible.

In short, my aunt stipulated, at one and the same time, that whoever came to see her must approve of her way of life, commiserate with her in her sufferings, and assure her of an ultimate recovery

Ao falar, imaginamos sempre que nos escutam com os nossos ouvidos, com a nossa alma.

To be with the people one loves, to speak to them, not to speak to them, it is all the same.

Un ser real, por profundamente que simpaticemos con él, le percibimos en gran parte por medio de nuestros sentidos, es decir, sigue opaco para nosotros y ofrece un peso muerto que nuestra sensibilidad no es capaz de levantar. Si le sucede una desgracia, no podemos sentirla más que en una parte mínima de la noción total que de él tenemos, ni tampoco podrá él sentirlo más que en una parte de la noción total que de sí tenga.

our social personality is created by the thoughts of other people.

But we lied to each other, Robert and I, as in every conversation when one friend is genuinely anxious to help another who is desperately in love. The friend who is being counsellor, prop, comforter, may pity the other's distress but cannot share it, and the kinder he is to him the more he has to lie.

Un être réel, si profondément que nous sympathisions avec lui, pour une grande part est perçu par nos sens, c'est-à-dire nous reste opaque, offre un poids mort que notre sensibilité ne peut soulever.

A cordial nature exaggerates a friend's qualities with as much pleasure as a mischievous one finds in depreciating them.

But as soon as I was with some one else, when I began to talk to a friend, my mind at once 'turned about,' it was towards the listener and not myself that it directed its thoughts, and when they followed this outward course they brought me no pleasure.

To anything that we do not know to be related to the real life of the person whom we love we pay but scant attention, we forget immediately what she has said to us about some incident or people that we do not know, and her expression while she was saying it.

But friendship does not express itself in the same way in different people.

A stranger leaves us indifferent, and indifference does not prompt us to unkind actions.

Em suma, minha tia exigia, ao mesmo tempo em que a aprovassem em seu regime, que a lamentassem por seus padecimentos e que a tranquilizassem quanto ao futuro.

Other people are, as a rule, so immaterial to us that, when we have entrusted to any one of them the power to cause so much suffering or happiness to ourselves, that person seems at once to belong to a different universe,

Quand on aime, l'amour est trop grand pour pouvoir être contenu tout entier en nous; il irradie vers la personne aimée, rencontre en elle une surface qui l'arrête, le force à revenir vers son point de départ et c'est ce choc en retour de notre propre tendresse que nous appelons les sentiments de l'autre et qui nous charme plus qu'à l'aller, parce que nous ne reconnaissons pas qu'elle vient de nous.

I did not believe what he was saying, but I bore him no ill-will for that, for I had inherited from my mother and grandmother their incapacity for resentment even of far worse offenders, and their habit of never condemning anyone

When one feels oneself smitten by love for a woman, one ought to say to oneself, 'What are 'her surroundings? What has been her life?' All one's future happiness lies in the answer.

Y, desde luego, eso no quiere decir que, cuando el Sr.Legranin echaba pestes contra los esnobs, no fuese sincero. No podía saber, al menos por sí mismo, que él sí lo era, pues nunca conocemos sino las pasiones de los demás y lo que llegamos a saber de las nuestras sólo a ellos se lo debemos

Which was for me the true friend—Mme de Montmorency, so happy to ruffle my feelings and always so willing to oblige, or Mme de Guermantes, distressed at the least offense toward me and incapable of the least effort to be helpful?

I was not yet old enough, I was still too sensitive to have outgrown the desire to find favour in the sight of other people and to possess their hearts.

It is the tragedy of other people that they are merely showcases for the very perishable collections of one's own mind.

Robert, I'm surprised that a man of your intelligence should fail to understand that one doesn't discuss the things that will give one's friends pleasure; one does them.