Quotes About Empathy

It seems impossible that good people – so many good people – can exist in the same world where men shoot up whole families at birthday parties and then stand over their corpses and eat their chicken.

Ángela has been a nurse in this city long enough to know that the pain of the family often eclipses the pain of the patient.

Many of them look Luca and Mami right in the eye, and say, "God bless you," and they smile. Luca would like to smile back, but he feels peculiar, too. He is unaccustomed to pity.

There is always a smile, a blessing, a flare of recognition from the hardworking young man who, because of the way beauty begets empathy (among other things), imagines his own little sister or cousin or daughter in the place of these girls.

At worst, we perceive them as an invading mob of resource-draining criminals, and, at best, a sort of helpless, impoverished, faceless brown mass, clamoring for help at our doorstep. We seldom think of them as our fellow human beings.

Lydia thanks the girls, and her spoken gratitude feels entirely insufficient, because what she really needs to say is that the food, yes, but also their kindness, their humanity, their very existence, has nourished some withered, essential part of herself.

His grief is not the same as hers.

Paola is a stranger, but her hands on Lydia's back are the hands of God. They are Sebastián's and Yemi's and Yénifer's. They are her mother's hands.

In the morning, a local resident drapes a hose over the garden wall so the migrants can brush their teeth, wet their faces, and fill their canteens. A contingent of older ladies walks the tracks, passing out blessings with homemade bagged sandwiches and pickles. A guard from the hut calls Luca over and passes him a grape lollipop through the chain-link fence.

At worst, we perceive them as an invading mob of resource-draining criminals, and, at best, a sort of helpless, impoverished, faceless brown mass, clamoring for help at our doorstep. We seldom think of them as our fellow human beings. People with the agency to make their own decisions, people who can contribute to their own bright futures, and to ours, as so many generations of oft-reviled immigrants have done before them.

She's donated money. She's wondered with the sort of detached fascination of the comfortable elite how dire the conditions of their lives must be wherever they come from, that this is the better option. That these people would leave their homes, their cultures, their families, even their languages, and venture into tremendous peril, risking their very lives, all for the chance to get to the dream of some faraway country that doesn't even want them.

If you're a person who has the capacity to be a bridge, why not be a bridge?

you. Because people are complex

beauty begets empathy

Despite everything he's been through, or maybe also because of it, her boy has weighed the call of his conscience above the call of his own salvation.

They perceive each other, the unspoken trauma they've both endured, their reasons for being here. It's as subtle and significant as a heartbeat.

We have to help them. If the suffering of our friends means nothing, if those kids can't be allowed to see us, to see Mexico as it really is, then what are they even doing here? Are they just drive-by Samaritans?

It will be a great day when our schools get all the money they need and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber. If love comes from the heart, where does hate come from? Children aren't born knowing how to hate. They must be taught. Therefore, the lesson is simple. Let's not teach our children hatred and prejudice, because what they don't know won't hurt them — or others. PEACE IS PATRIOTIC.

Lydia understands that it's not a disguise at all. She and Luca are actual migrants. That is what they are. And that simple fact, among all the other severe new realities of her life, knocks the breath clean out of her lungs. All her life she's pitied those poor people.

Less than two weeks ago, dirt on the floor in her hallway was a thing that could annoy her. It's unimaginable. The reality of what happened is so much worse than the very worst of her imaginary fears had ever been.

This is not the kind of thing that happens, ever. Not even here. Do you know anyone else who's lost sixteen family members in one day?" Meredith glares at him, but he plows ahead. "We have to help them. If the suffering of our friends means

Less than two weeks ago, dirt on the floor in her hallway was a thing that could annoy her. It's unimaginable.

At sixteen, the adolescent knows about suffering because he himself has suffered, but he barely knows that other beings also suffer.

Do not judge and you will never be mistaken.