Quotes About Empathy

He was my friend, faithful, and just to me, but Brutus says, he was ambitious, and Brutus is an honorable man. He hath brought many captives home to Rome, whose ransoms did the general coffers fill. Did this in Caesar seem ambitious. When the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept. Ambition should me made of sterner stuff, yet Brutus says, he was ambitious and Brutus is an honorable man.

Speak to me as to thy thinkings, As thou dost ruminate, and give thy worst of thoughts The worst of words.

True friendship is always a sweet responsible, never an opportunity.

She's still your mother." Meaning no matter what she's done, how much you don't understand her, you will treat her with respect. She's still your mother.

The proper means of increasing the love we bear our native country is to reside some time in a foreign one.

The best time to frame an answer to the letters of a friend, is the moment you receive them. Then the warmth of friendship, and the intelligence received, most forcibly cooperate.

Human beings who blind themselves to human need make themselves less human.

it's always a good time to change your mind when to do so will widen your heart.

We seek pitifully to convey to others the treasures of our heart, but they have not the power to accept them, and so we go lonely, side by side but not together, unable to know our fellows and unknown by them.

I am your own way of looking at things," she said. "When you allow me to live with you, every glance at the world around you will be a sort of salvation

If you don't know the kind of person I am and I don't know the kind of person you are a pattern that others made may prevail in the world and following the wrong god home we may miss our star. ... And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail, but if one wanders the circus won't find the park, I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

He was able to love them again, but he loved them now in a wiser way, knowing their weakness.

Acceptance of another person is acceptance of the other as he is, without entailing any demands that he change in any empirical way. This boy is an addict, and while I would rejoice if he were freed from this affliction, that would not change or increase my acceptance of him as a person. And though I am not an addict, that makes me no better nor any worse than he. I am not his judge. I am just his friend.

If you want to do something, the most practical thing I can tell you is: weep. First of all, care enough to weep.

A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading.

Maybe. But we all need reassurance, don't we?' 'Of what? That we're normal?' 'Something like that. Not in every way. Just reassurance that our problems aren't because we're crazy or weak or stupid – that other people have the same difficulties.

It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation. War is hell.

Humility does not mean thinking less of yourself than of other people, nor does it mean having a low opinion of your own gifts. It means freedom from thinking about yourself at all

She is embarrassed to be alive and no one on earth can fully console her.

By the end, you should be inside your character, actually operating from within somebody else, and knowing him pretty well, as that person knows himself or herself. You're sort of a predator, an invader of people.

Shame isn't bad, her voice from somewhere else insists. Nor the humility that is its gift.

You need to suspend your reaction when you feel like striking back, to listen when you feel like talking back, to ask questions when you feel like telling your opponent the answers, to bridge your differences when you feel like pushing for your way, and to educate when you feel like escalating. Breakthrough

How can we get what we really want and at the same time deal with the needs of others in our lives? Perhaps no human dilemma is more pervasive or challenging.

How many of us can honestly say that we have plumbed the depths of our minds and hearts? How many of us regularly listen to ourselves with empathy and understanding—in the supportive way that a trusted friend can?