Quotes About Empathy

It is a paradox to not want to infringe upon the will of the loved being. To love is to accept undergoing the other's influence and also to exercise influence on the other.

We perceive others as reflections and at the same time as lacunae in relation to ourselves. In effect, it is like a forbidden zone...With others, it will always be impossible to perceive them in their totalities--that is, to perceive them as they perceive themselves.

The truth of a social system lies in the type of human relations it makes possible.

Empathy makes it that there is "the one" and not "the same.

Through other eyes we are for ourselves fully visible.

Rather than imprisoning it, language is like a magic machine for transporting the 'I' into the other person's perspective.

When I am listening, it is not necessary that I have an auditory perception of the articulated sounds but that the conversation pronounces itself within me. It summons me and grips me; it envelops and inhabits me to the point that I cannot tell what comes from me and what from it. Whether speaking or listening, I project myself into the other person, I introduce him into my own self.

The child and adult reflect each other like two mirrors endlessly placed face to face. The child that we believe exists is the reflection we desire. We are all indissolubly tied to the fact that the other is facing us the way we are facing him.

I live in the facial expressions of the other, as I feel him living in mine.

As the thing, as the other, the true dawns through an emotional and almost carnal experience, where the "ideas"—the other's and our own—are rather traits of his physiognomy and of our own, are less understood than welcomed or spurned in love or hatred.

What I do as best I can is out of a deep respect for children, for how difficult their world is.

El silencio es el verdadero crimen de lesa humanidad.

Reírse un poquito del dolor hace al dolor un poco más pequeño.

la primera ley exigible de la poesía: enseñar la virtud, la indulgencia y el amor al prójimo, además de servir, en caso de ataque, de arma arrojadiza.

Everyone needs help. That's the human condition.

Beware how you take hope from another human being. - Oliver Wendell Holms Jr.

People are very quick to ridicule others for showing fear. But we rarely know the secret springboards behind human action. The man who shows great fear today may be tomorrow's hero. Who are we to judge?" Audie Murphy, most decorated soldier of World War II, Congressional Medal of Honor winner.

Everyone's broken, one way or another.

We must stop talking about the American dream and start listening to the dreams of Americans.

It is the ability to take a joke, not make one, that proves you have a sense of humor.

Tolerate the dull: they too have their story

Freunde müssen einander verstehen um Freunde zu bleiben. Brüder sind immer Brüder.

Es gibt allerlei Arten, einen Menschen zu morden oder wenigstens seine Seele, und das merkt keine Polizei der Welt. Dann genügt ein Wort, eine Offenheit im rechten Augenblick. Dann genügt ein Lächeln. Ich möchte den Menschen sehen, der nicht durch Lächeln umzubringen ist oder durch Schweigen.

Ich kann es nicht ausstehen, wenn man mir sagt, was ich zu empfinden habe; dann komme ich mir, obschon ich sehe, wovon die Rede ist, wie ein Blinder vor.