Quotes About Empathy

Halfway across town, Father Tibor Kasparian lay on the long hard cement cot that was what this jail cell had for a bed and wished he had a book. It could be any book. He didn't really think he could read right now, but it always made him feel better, and calmer, and more sane, to hold a book. He had never been able to understand people who did not read. He had never been able to understand how they held on to themselves.

if the people who called themselves Christians behaved like Christians, there wouldn't be any people sleeping in the street.

We all need people to tell us that we were the ones who had been deeply wronged.

I have given up on speech with the Rev; there is no use explaining that you have to learn where your pain is. You have to burrow down and find the wound, and if the burden of it is too terrible to shoulder you have to shout it out; you have to shout for help. My trust, even down in that dark place I carry, is that some person will come running. And then finally the way through grief is grieving.

Emma, Emma, Emma," I said, wishing I could somehow teach her to take the smaller blows of life in her stride.

Open your heart to a baseball team and you're liable to get it broken.

Tenderness does not choose its own uses. It goes out to everything equally, circling rabbit and hawk. Look: in the iron bucket, a single nail, a single ruby - all the heavens and hells. They rattle in the heart and make one sound.

The griefs of others—beautiful, at a distance.

Plants, stones, utensils, each thing has its individual feelings, similar to those of men," Bash? wrote.

How close to human must the breathed-in air come before it develops a sense of shame or humor?

We have to make friends with ourselves and be kind to those aspects of ourselves we like least. Learning to be kind to ourselves brings the discovery that fundamentally we are quite soft. We become hard when we habitually deny our own woundedness and blame others for causing our pain. In admitting our own hurt, we become soft and vulnerable.

Paradoxically, if we accept our own suffering and fully relate it with the suffering of others, we transform that pain into a means of liberation.

The attitude of neutrality allows grandparents to listen to the teenager without the emotional baggage their parents carry. And if we listen carefully, we may be able to glimpse what the teenager is going through.

Mindful of the boundaries between us and our grown children, we make the effort to take the differences between us less personally

My happiest moments are when all my children are okay. That's just how life is. We've all been through it ourselves. It is hard, because you are so bon of their bone, skin of their skin. You feel things so strongly, if you are truly a loving parent.

My happiest moments are when all my children are okay. That's just how life is. We've all been through it ourselves. It is hard, because you are so bone of their bone, skin of their skin. You feel things so strongly, if you are truly a loving parent.

Kindness is the beaded belt that binds all together. Expect kindness. Whatever you give out will be returned

they listened to understand rather than to respond.

A tragedy tears away a hope; a kindness brings it back.

She would not exploit anyone. People would not observed by irony run amok. The audience would not have their superiority confirmed. Somehow they would feel like everyone was in it together.

a power struggle with your child. When that happens, be willing to back away and start over when you have changed your attitude—which will enable your child to change his.

mirror neurons help him figure out how to imitate you. In the same way, when you are angry, excited, or anxious, his mirror neurons will "catch" your emotion and create that same feeling within him.

Los niños se comportan bien cuando se sienten bien. ¿De dónde sacamos la ridícula idea de que para que los niños se porten bien, primero los papás deben hacerles sentir vergüenza, humillación e incluso sufrimiento? Los niños se sienten más motivados a cooperar, a aprender nuevas habilidades y a ofrecer afecto cuando se sienten alentados, conectados y amados.

There is simply no substitute for time and attention, and children who have the opportunity to bond well with parents find it easier to get along with others and to be comfortable in their world as they grow up.