Quotes About Empathy

When the only one who has a right to be angry chooses love and service, when He considers the interests of others more important than His own and chooses humility–He changes everything (p. 55).

In our attempts to help, we can overinterpret suffering

do not end the conversation without an offer to pray. Ask what he needs prayer for and either pray right then or pray later and then follow up the next time you see him.

You can't have a deeper relationship if you won't allow yourself to be known. All

Once we pray with or for someone, we are in the ongoing story of his life, and it is an honor to be there.

Who in your life is one step ahead of you in knowing people? What does that person do?

We don't aim to draw out problems so that we can be helpers. We are simply interested in knowing another person, which is a basic feature of everyday love.

In an African hospital, a pastor who had just witnessed another death was approached by a poor, elderly woman. "You know," she said, taking my [the pastor's] arm, "through many losses of family and friends and through much sorrow, the Lord has taught me one thing. Jesus Christ did not come to take away our pain and suffering, but to share in it."2

most gifts emerge in the context of serving people.

All anyone can hope for is just a tiny bit of love, manman says, like a drop in a cup if you can get it, or a waterfall, a flood, if you can get that too.

Our fatigue limited our desire to talk. Besides, each person's story did nothing except bring you closer to your own pain.

There's a Haitian saying, "Pitit moun se lave yon bò, kite yon bò." When you bathe other people's children, it says, you should wash one side and leave the other side dirty. I suppose this saying cautions those who care for other people's children not to give over their whole hearts, because they will never get a whole heart back.

Isabelle didn't need to call my name. Not because of the twin telepathy thing people always talk about, but because we were holding hands. We were holding hands the tightest we have ever held hands in our entire lives. We were holding hands just as we had on the day we were born.

Your son is my friend,...He is my very terrible and imperfect and dear friend.

I didn't feel guilty about burning my mother's name anymore. I knew my hurt and hers were links in a long chain and if she hurt me, it was because she was hurt, too.

Each death frames previous deaths in a different light, and even deaths to come. During the time my mother was sick, I found myself crying uncontrollably over the deaths of people I barely knew.

I am too easily swayed by every story I hear, or see, or witness, especially the tragic ones," she said. "I think this is going to be the story of my life. I'm going to be the girl who is too easily swayed by other people's stories.

Trauma is not what happens to us, but what we hold inside us in the absence of an empathetic witness. —Peter Levine, The Unspoken Voice

when one individual in a marriage stands up to another, while the other will not like it at first, he or she generally will begin to find the person more attractive.

The three criteria of reptilian functioning that leaders of any family or institution can always rely on to judge madness (of others or their own) are ??interfering in the relationships of others; ??unceasingly trying to convert others to their own point of view; and ??being unable to relate to people who do not agree with them.

any community or family discussion, those who are the first to introduce concern for empathy feel powerless, and are trying to use the togetherness force of a regressed society to get those whom they perceive to have power to adapt to them.

there's a strength in not being strong.

The enthusiastic, to those who are not, are always something of a trial.

Being sociable and affable with people brings kindness and friendship.