Quotes About Empathy

The woman's soul is fashioned as a shelter in which other souls may unfold." -- Edith Stein

I want to put my hand out and touch you. I want to do for you and care for you. I want to be there when you're sick and when you're lonesome.

I felt there was no one as kind as you; no one who gave me reasons that I understood for doing what at first seemed so hard and--unnecessary.

We shall hurt others less. Isn't it, after all, what you always wanted?

Believe me, all of you, the best way to help the places we live in is to be glad we live there.

She wondered if, when human souls try to get too near each other, they do not inevitably become mere blurs to each other's vision.

One of the great things about travel is you find out how many good, kind people there are.

I cannot picture what the life of the spirit would have been without him. He found me when my mind and soul were hungry and thirsty, and he fed them till our last hour together. It is such comradeships, made of seeing and dreaming, and thinking and laughing together, that make one feel that for those who have shared them there can be no parting.

It was a long time since any one had spoken to him as kindly as Mrs Hale. Most people were either indifferent to his troubles, or disposed to think it natural that a young fellow of his age should have carried without repining the burden of three crippled lives. But Mrs Hale had said 'You've had an awful mean time, Ethan Frome,' and he felt less alone with his misery.

There was money enough... but she asked so much of life, in ways so complex and immaterial. He thought of her as walking bare-footed through a stony waste. No one would understand her- no one would pity her- and he, who did both, was powerless to come to her aid.

The affair, in short, had been of the kind that most of the young men of his age had been through and emerged from with calm consciences and an undisturbed belief in the abysmal distinction between the women one loved and respected and those one enjoyed—and pitied.

His light tone, in which, had her nerves been steadier, she would have recognized the mere effort to bridge over an awkward moment, jarred on her passionate desire to be understood. In her strange state of extra-lucidity, which gave her the sense of being already at the heart of the situation, it seemed incredible that any one should think it necessary to linger in the conventional outskirts of word-play and evasion.

But it is comparatively easy to behave beautifully when one is getting what one wants, and when some one else, who has not always been altogether kind, is not.

The fact that he and she understood each other without a word seemed to bring them nearer than any explanation would have done.

Only the fact that we are unaware how well our nearest know us enables us to live with them. Love is the most impregnable refuge of self-esteem, and we hate the eye that reaches to our nakedness. Edith Wharton ~ The Touchstone

Poor May! he said. Poor? Why poor? she echoed with a strained laugh. Because I shall never be able to open a window without worrying you, he rejoined, laughing also. For a moment she was silent; then she said very low, her head bowed over her work: I shall never worry if you're happy. Ah, my dear; and I shall never be happy unless I can open the windows! In THIS weather? she remonstrated; and with a sigh he buried his head in his book.

But in another moment she seemed to have descended from her womanly eminence to helpless and timorous girlhood; and he understood that her courage and initiative were all for others, and that she had none for herself. It was evident that the effort of speaking had been much greater than her studied composure betrayed, and that at his first word of reassurance she had dropped back into the usual, as a too adventurous child takes refuge in its mother's arms.

And how can anyone give you happiness who hasn't got it himself?

In the joy of her gratified desires she wanted to make everybody about her happy. If only everyone would do as she wished she would never be unreasonable. She much preferred to see smiling faces about her, and her dread of the reproachful and dissatisfied countenance gave the measure of what she would do to avoid it.

The only way I can help you is by loving you,' Selden said in a low voice.

Perhaps, if I hadn't been, once before—I mean, if I'd always been a prudent deliberate Ralston, it would have been kinder to Tina in the end." Dr. Lanskell sank his gouty bulk into the chair behind his desk, and beamed at her through ironic spectacles. "I hate in-the-end kindnesses: they're about as nourishing as the third day of cold mutton.

To a torn heart uncomforted by human nearness a room may open almost human arms, and the being to whom no four walls mean more than any others, is, at such hours, expatriate everywhere.

and my heart tightened for the hard compulsions of the poor.

Jamás os pedíais nada el uno al otro, ¿verdad? Y nunca os contabais nada. Os sentabais, os mirabais y adivinabais lo que pasaba por dentro. ¡Un asilo de sordomudos, en definitiva!