Quotes About Empathy

there are only some many times you can utter It does not hurt before it begins to hurt even more than the hurt.

only someone who'd never been an animal would put up a sign saying not to feed them....

I didn't understand why I needed help, because it seemed to me that you should wear heavy boots when your dad dies, and if you aren't wearing heavy boots, then you need help.

I looked at everyone and wondered where they came from, and who they missed, and what they were sorry for.

In sickness and in sickness. That is what I wish for you. Don't seek or expect miracles. There are no miracles. Not anymore. And there are no cures for the hurt that hurts most. There is only the medicine of believing each other's pain, and being present for it.

Please be truthful, but also please be benevolent, please.

It made me start to wonder if there were other people so lonely so close. I thought about "Eleanor Rigby." It's true, where do they all come from? And where do they all belong?

I put my hand on the doorknob because I thought maybe her hand was on the doorknob on the other side.

This brings me back to the image of Kafka standing before a fish in the Berlin aquarium, a fish on which his gaze fell in a newly found peace after he decided not to eat animals. Kafka recognized that fish as a member of his invisible family- not as his equal, of course, but as another being that was his concern.

It's much easier to be cruel than one might think.

Good people don't make fewer mistakes, they're just better at apologizing.

I saw Herschel and he saw me and we stood next to each other because that is what friends do in the presence of evil or love.

Between any two beings there is a unique, uncrossable distance, an unenterable sanctuary. Sometimes it takes the shape of aloneness. Sometimes it takes the shape of love.

I'm not better than anyone, and I'm not trying to convince people to live by my standards of what's right. I'm trying to convince them to live by their own.

Only humans can cry tears.

We shared the smile of recognizing ourselves in each other.

Sadness and joy aren't opposites of each other. They are each the opposite of indifference.

My boots were so heavy that I was glad there was a column beneath us. How could such a lonely person have been living so close to me my whole life? If I had known, I would have gone up to keep him company.

Cruelty depends on an understanding of cruelty, and the ability to choose against it. Or to choose to ignore it.

He Wrote, Are you OK? I told him, My eyes are crummy. He wrote, But are you OK? I told him, That's a very complicated question. He wrote, That's a very simple answer. I asked, Are you OK? He wrote, Some mornings I wake up feeling grateful.

i couldn't speak the language of his feelings

Am I such a bad person for dreaming of a world that ends when I do? I don't mean the world ending with respect to me, but every set of eyes closing with mine.

We need much bigger pockets I thought as I lay in my bed counting off the seven minutes that it takes a normal person to fall asleep. We need enormous pockets pockets big enough for our families and our friends and even the people who aren't on our lists people we've never met but still want to protect. We need pockets for borough and for cities a pocket that could hold the universe.

I woke up once in the middle of the night, and Buckminster's paws were on my eyelids. He must have been feeling my nightmares.