Quotes About Empathy

look for something in return, but that doesn't make it any less kind." Perhaps unlooked-for kindness along the way

Trees are their kin, with hopes, fears, and social codes, and their goal as people has always been to charm and inveigle green things, to win them in symbolic marriage.

If destructive technology amplifies violence, constructive technology amplifies compassion, and the lessons of technology are universal.

In an attempt to break out and be a reasonable man, I had to realize that my own worries about what I did were valid and were important, but that they were not the whole story, that there must be a complementary way of looking at them, because other people did not see them as I did.

had to realize that my own worries about what I did were valid and were important, but that they were not the whole story, that there must be a complementary way of looking at them, because other people did not see them as I did.2146 And I needed what they saw, and needed them." Certainly he found the more traditional alleviation of losing himself in work.

If, because of my schooling, I had grown culturally separated from my parents, my education finally had given me ways of speaking and caring about that fact.

When we fail we are merely joining the great parade of humanity that has walked ahead of us and will follow after us.

In the second half of life, we do not have strong and final opinions about everything, every event, or most people, as much as we allow things and people to delight us, sadden us, and truly influence us.

Pain and suffering that are not transformed are usually projected onto others.

Failure and suffering are the great equalizers and levelers among humans. Success is just the opposite. Communities and commitment can form around suffering much more than around how wonderful or superior we are.

It is hardly an exaggeration to say that "us-and-them" seeing, and the dualistic thinking that results, is the foundation of almost all discontent and violence in the world.

Our first experience of life is primarily felt in the *body.* ... We know ourselves in the security of those who hold us and gaze upon us. It's not heard or seen or thought it's felt. That's the original knowing.

Frankly, Jesus came to show us how to be human much more than how to be spiritual, and the process still seems to be in its early stages.

The Church, as Jesus seems to be defining it, is the gathering of accepted brokenness. It's not the gathering of the saved.

you are often most gifted to heal others precisely where you yourself were wounded, or wounded others.

Francis's starting place was human suffering instead of human sinfulness

forgiveness always heals; it does not matter whether you are Hindu, Buddhist, Catholic or Jewish. Forgiveness is one of the patterns that is always true, it is part of The Story. There is no specifically Catholic way to feed the hungry or to steward the earth.

Did you ever notice that Jesus himself was not really that upset at the bad behavior that most of us call sin? Instead, he directed his critical attention toward people who did not think they were sinners, who could not see their own shadows or dark sides, or acknowledge their complicity in the world's domination systems.

If we do not transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it.

Do not get rid of your hurts until you have learned all that they have to teach you.

Holier-than-thou people usually end up holier than nobody.

It's not the idea that we hear, as much as the positive or negative energy behind it.

We mend and renew the world by strengthening inside ourselves what we seek outside ourselves, and not by demanding it of others or trying to force it on others.

As Dorothy Day once wisely said, "What the Gospel forever takes away from Christians is the right to judge between the worthy and the unworthy poor.