Quotes About Empathy

You are not other people. You are you. You have no control over other people. You have no absolute control over what they think of the world or of politics or of you. You have no control over what harm they may have done. Even if the harm they have done is to you.

It's okay to let people find you. You don't have to spread yourself so thin you become invisible. You don't have to always be the person reaching out. You can sometimes allow yourself to be reached. As the great writer Anne Lamott puts it: "Lighthouses don't go running all over an island for boats to save; they just stand there shining.

We're all total bastards, us humans, but also totally wonderful.

Kindness is a boomerang. You throw it out and you get it back. You had done kind things in the world, and you had been rewarded with kindness in return.

Listen more than you talk.

If we were happier with our bodies, we'd be kinder to them.

Whenever I see someone reading a book, especially if it is someone I don't expect, I feel civilisation has become a little safer

When I am in a room with People," he wrote, "if I ever am free from speculating on creations of my own brain, then not myself goes home to myself: but the identity of everyone in the room begins to press upon me so that I am in a very little time annihilated.

When we feel or experience terrible things, it is useful to remember that nothing lasts. Perspective shifts. We become different versions of ourselves. The hardest question I have ever been asked is: "How do I stay alive for other people if I have no one?" The answer is that you stay alive for other versions of you. For the people you will meet, yes, sure, but also the people you will be.

I have carefully calculated that the pain of me living as the bloody disaster that is myself is greater than the pain anyone else will feel if I were to die.

A sore throat doesn't become less sore simply because you've felt it before.

Sadness seemed to me like a disease, and I worried it was contagious.

Keep allowing yourself the human privilege of mistakes.

You don't need the world to understand you. It's fine. Some people will never really understand things they haven't experienced. Some will. Be grateful.

A friend doesn't care about the size of your house and that friend can be human, pixie or mouse. A friend may be a rabbit, a friend may be an elf. But a friend is a friend, if they like you for yourself.

We need to build a kind of immune system of the mind, where we can absorb but not get infected by the world around us.

I still keep that magic alive by trying to make people happy. By seeing the goodness in people. And letting that goodness shine back.

We can look at the world through more than one lens. If we look at people through the lens of emotion, at the feelings that drive opinions, rather than the opinions themselves, it's easy to see the things we share. The hopes, the fears, the loves, the insecurities, the longings, the doubts, the dreams. Other people can be wrong, and we can be wrong, and that is another thing we have in common. The capacity for fucking up. And for forgiving.

As Thoreau wrote, 'It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.' And Ash only saw the Nora he had fallen in love with and married, and so, in a way, that was the Nora she was becoming.

Well, you don't see yourself as a bad cat owner any more. You looked after him as well as he could have been looked after. He loved you as much as you loved him, and maybe he didn't want you to see him die. You see, cats know. They understand when their time is up. He went outside becuase he was going to die, and he knew it.

Listen, I know you think my father was a bad human, and it was a bad thing he did, but there was good, too. He was just weak. We had no money. Humans are... complicated.

Whenever I see someone reading a book, especially if it is someone I don't expect, I feel civilization has become a little safer.

anything that lessens that extreme sense of self, that makes me feel me but at a lower volume, is very welcome.

I do like you,' said Miika, in his quiet mouse language, 'even though you are not a dairy product.