Quotes About Empathy

To join the others was to care, and to care was to live and to suffer.

I mean, he told me that the shittiness of Warren having another girlfriend paled in comparison to the epic shittiness of your shitty husband

To live in prison is to live without mirrors. To live without mirrors is to live without the self. She is living selflessly, she finds a hole in the stone wall and on the other side of the wall, a voice. The voice comes through darkness and has no face. This voice becomes her mirror.

My friends, who are both women, tell me their stories, which cannot be believed and which are true. They are horror stories and they have not happened to me, they have not yet happened to me, they have happened to me but we are detached, we watch our unbelief with horror.

In the whole round of human affairs little is so fatal to peace as misunderstanding.

Friends, like pianos, need frequent tuning. You are in the right key when you sing the praises of others. —HEATHER MACGREGOR

The cure for a broken heart is simple, my lady. A hot bath and a good night's sleep.

Kindness is stronger than iron bars.

We must move from asking God to take care of the things that are breaking our hearts, to praying about the things that are breaking His heart.

Whenever I dwell for any length of time on my own shortcomings, they gradually begin to see mild, harmless, rather engaging little things, not at all like the staring defects in other people's characters.

Reading fiction—excerpts from National Book Award finalists, winners of the Pen/O. Henry Prize for short stories, or even Amazon bestsellers—has been shown to enhance theory of mind:

When we can lay down our fear and anger and choose responses other than aggression, we create the conditions for bringing out the best in us humans.

Listening is such a simple act. It requires us to be present, and that takes practice, but we don't have to do anything else. We don't have to advise, or coach, or sound wise. We just have to be willing to sit there and listen.

It's been said thousands of times, in all faiths and philosophies. Know thyself. What may be less clear in these wise expressions is the reason we learn to know ourselves: we develop a knowledge of self so that we can give up the self and serve others.

Focus on serving others. ... No matter what is going on around us, we can attend to the people in front of us, to the issues confronting us and there, we offer what we can. We can offer insight and compassion. We can be present. We can stay and not flee. We can be exemplars of the best human qualities. That is a life well lived, even if we didn't save the world.

the infinite capacity of humans to wound one another without meaning or wanting to

Silences make the real conversations between friends. Not the saying but the never needing to say is what counts.

Silence makes the real conversation between friends. Not the saying, but the never needing to say is what counts.

What may seem like a reasonable way of protecting oneself can look very different from the other side of the border.

There are always two people involved in cruelty, aren't there? One to be vicious and someone to suffer! And what's the use of getting rid of - of wickedness, say - in the outside world if you let it creep back into things from inside you?

Will you still love me when I'm a monster?

You don't adopt a single child, you adopt the pain of the world. It's a litmus test of your incapacity.

Piangere insieme, per una coppia, è un minuscolo, emblematico accadimento... è il respiro dell'altro che crepa nella tua gola.

Persone benefiche che incontri per caso e ti viene voglia di abbracciare, perché ti sorridono dal fondo della loro esperienza umana e di colpo ti risarciscono dell'altra metà del mondo, quella accasciante delle persone rinserrate nella loro pozza di buio.