Quotes About Empathy

It was becoming very clear to everyone that one of the most powerful dynamics in relationships is trying to understand the other person's dreams, and helping them chase and fulfill those dreams.

every relationship improves when we are mindful of each other's dreams.

We hide because we think people will love us less if they truly know us, but the opposite is true in most cases. If we are willing to take the risk and reveal ourselves for who we are, we discover that most people are relieved to know that we are human. Why? Because they are human, too, and are filled with the same fear as you. In most cases, you will find that the things you thought would cause people to stop loving you actually lead them to love you more.

You may think you know just about everything there is to know about your partner, but you will be amazed at what you are missing out on if you open yourself up to taking another look. So, from time to time, it may help to approach each other as if for the first time. In this way you will experience the joy of rediscovery. Intimacy is not always about seeing new things. Sometimes it is about seeing what has always been before you, but in a different light or from a new perspective.

Too often we spend too much time asking or wondering why it didn't work out. Why do friendships end? Why do people break up? These are great questions, but surely the more important question is, What keeps people together? And not just together, but together in dynamic relationships. For the primary goal of relationships is not simply to stay together. Many people succeed in staying together but have failed relationships: their relationships are surviving but not thriving.

We need friends who help to make us whole, not friends who add to our dividedness.

Lacking real compassion and charity for others, he would take pleasure in weeping and rejoicing with the fictional characters on the stage. His love was not real.

We're all damaged. Every single beautiful, stupid, precious one of us. Damaged, damaged, damaged.

Sometimes in life, it doesn't matter that you've just woken up on a floor. Or that you haven't brushed your teeth. Or that your hair is a mess and you're wearing the clothes you slept in. Sometimes you just have to be polite.

Shakespeare brings us to know ourselves. Dante, with his dissection of all others, bids us to know one another.

Pity without rigor would be cowardly egotism, mere sentimentality.'

Be to her virtues very kind. Be to her faults a little blind.

Be to their virtue very kind; be to their faults a little blind.

In so many ways, Ascham thought, she was beyond her years—but in the presence of her father she became a little girl again. So confident and assured in private, now she moved with the stilted awkwardness of every twelve-year-old girl. Ascham's heart went out to her.

A civilization is judged by how it treats the vulnerable.

Animals are more than ever a test of our character, of mankind's capacity for empathy and for decent, honorable conduct and faithful stewardship. We are called to treat them with kindness, not because they have rights or power or some claim to equality, but in a sense because they don't; because they all stand unequal and powerless before us.

The only thing worse than cruelty is delegated cruelty.

Where we find wrongs done to animals, it is no excuse to say that more important wrongs are done to human beings, and let us concentrate on those. A wrong is a wrong, and often the little ones, when they are shrugged off as nothing, spread and do the gravest harm to ourselves and others.

Animals are more than ever a test of our character, of mankind's capacity for empathy and for decent, honorable conduct and faithful stewardship. We are called to treat them with kindness, not because they have rights or power or some claim to equality, but in a sense because they don't; because they all stand unequal and powerless before us. Animals are so easily overlooked, their interests so easily brushed aside.

For a moment she knew exactly what he was thinking, not just about Tom, but about her, and himself, and all of life, and she liked the way he saw things. She could spend her life tuning into the calming frequency of his thoughts. He wasn't a stiff, and he wasn't a weakling either. What was the word for it? Sensitive was the only one that came to mind, amazing as that was to consider; he was a sensitive man. He soaked up whatever you gave him.

She tried to imagine what it would feel like to have always been alone. She decided that being alone to begin with would be easier than being left alone. Everything would be easier than that.

I've never known someone to become more at home in his or her own body, in all of its flaws and its grace, without becoming more compassionate to all of life.

It is the only thing we can do. … Each of us must turn inward and destroy in himself all that he thinks he ought to destroy in others. And remember that every atom of hate added to this world makes it still more inhospitable. — ETTY HILLESUM29

Love is the only thing that doubles every time it's given," said Albert Schweitzer.