Quotes About Empathy

Having access to knowledge didn't always mean understanding things. I do not entirely understand people.

In this place—one can never see from one end of a street to the other, let alone men's hearts.

There was a terrible pain in his voice; it reminded Halla of a wound hurt; she wanted suddenly to lick the hurt place with a soft warm, bear's tongue, to lick it clean and into a shape of healing. But there was no wound on him that could be seen, nothing she could do but lay a hand on his shoulder, uncertainly.

If you don't want a man dead, don't bludgeon him over the head repeatedly.

They all had stories. They had mothers or fathers, sisters or lovers. They weren't alone in the world, mattering to no one but themselves. It seemed utterly wrong to treat them like pennies in a purse. I felt the soldiers understood perfectly well that we were making sums out of them-- this many safe to spend, this number too high, as if each one wasn't a whole man.

It is so easy to make mistakes when you are a parent. The easiest thing in the world," Marsha said. "But you can only do what you think is best at the moment. Maybe you will be smarter the next day, or the next month, or in five years. But it doesn't help you at the moment. You need to forgive yourself.

Books were like old friends, with their worn covers and well-thumbed pages..

Rabbi Yohonan said in the name of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai that to wound with words is much worse than to cheat in business, because you can give back the money you steal but you can never restore the pride of the person you hurt.

You taught me to care when I asked someone, 'How are you?,' to listen to the answer. You taught me that the people who don't ask, who don't speak, who are sitting alone on the sidelines, they are the people we need to sit down next to, not the ones who crowd around us.

The person you have known a long tme is embedded in you like a jewel. The person you have just met casts out a few glistening beams & you are fascinated to see more of them. How many more are there? With someone you've barely met the curiosity is intoxicating.

It is really hard to be lonely very long in a world of words. Even if you don't have friends somewhere, you still have language, and it will find you and wrap its little syllables around you and suddenly there will be a story to live in.

Let me peer out at the world through your lens. (Maybe I'll shudder, or gasp, or tilt my head in a question.) Let me see how your blue is my turquoise and my orange is your gold. Suddenly binary stars, we have startling gravity. Let's compare scintillation - let's share starlight.

I am looking for the human who admits his flaws Who shocks the adversary By being kinder not stronger What would that be like? We don't even know

If someday, in a morning, you see you, in a mirror or the dent of a spoon, and wonder Where is my soul and Where has it gone, remember this: Catch the gaze of a woman on the metro, subway, tram. Look at a man. Seek and you will find you in the silvered space, a flash between souls.

Poetry [is] more necessary than ever as a fire to light our tongues.

only kindness that raises its head from the crowd of the world to say it is I you have been looking for, and then goes with you everywhere like a shadow or a friend.

that falling to pieces serves nobody. You can't help anyone else hold themselves together if you yourself are scattered to the wind.

I know you're lonely, Mama," he whispers, his voice half-choked with sleep. "And sometimes… so am I.

Pain is real when you get other people to believe in it. If no one believes in it but you, your pain is madness or hysteria.

The world suffers a lot. Not because the violence of bad people. But because of the silence of the good people.

A man who has no consideration for the needs of his men ought never to be given command.

A true man hates no one.

If we could read the past histories of all our enemies we would disregard all hostility for them.

We must laugh at man to avoid crying for him.