Quotes About Empathy

Perhaps because I'll never be one, humans are interesting to me.

I would go to bed every night and have dreams about having a time machine and somehow I'd have the ability to move through time and space freely, and save Anne Frank.

Part of me wants to make this boy bruise, bleed, and sob, and part of me wants to soothe him and care for him. The tipically complex yearnings of the kinkily queer.

Talking perceptions, people. Do we really see each other for what we really are, or do we just see what we want to see, the image distorted by our own personal lenses I lost someone today and the funny thing is, I don't even know who she was.

In our open society, we are inclined to give to the less fortunate for the pure goodness of giving. We open our home to those who are alone on this holiday to spread some warmth into the life of another.

You must hold your head high and keep those fists down. No matter what anyone else says to you, don't let 'em get your goat. Try fightin' with your head for a change." —Atticus Finch, in To Kill a Mockingbird by

I want the world to be better because I was here. I want my life, my work, my family to mean something. If you are not making someone else's life better you are wasting your time. Your life will only become better by helping make other lives better.

Try showing up at your doctor's office and giving her your "requirements." Tell her the prescriptions you'd like written and the operations you'd like scheduled. If she's nice, she'll smile and say, "That's interesting; tell me where it hurts.

Try to make your working relationships much more like a good doctor-patient relationship, and much less like a waiter-diner's.

Shared understanding is when we both understand what the other person is imagining and why.

The real goal of using stories is shared understanding.

I've actually tried to roast somebody that I don't like, and it doesn't go well. Either they're a bad sport or I'm not as funny as I could be.

You don't want me to die alone, do you? Nobody should have to die alone." "You won't be alone," said Rachel. "The assassin will be there with you.

There's an amazing opportunity that so few people ever have in their lives to fulfill a wish for somebody. It's so rare that such a simple act, like playing a song someone loves, can make someone so happy. If you have that opportunity—the power to do that for anyone—that's an incredible gift.

if we all learn anything from being alive on this planet, it's that people will lie to you, especially about how much or little they care about you. And I would guess there's a lot more similarity in how we suffer than the way we experience joy.

Don't we want more than anything to make something that reflects who we are and how we feel honestly enough that someone else might feel seen or acknowledged, and less alone?

showing up with a reliably open heart and a will to share whatever spirit you can muster is what resonates and transcends technical perfection.

Sometimes, too, other people gave you their light, and could seem to flicker, to be hardly visible at all, if no one took care of them. Because they'd given you too much and had nothing left for themselves.

In unusual situations there can be a comfort in the presence of even someone you think might be your enemy.

A whale can injure another whale with its sonar. A whale can speak to another whale across sixty miles of ocean. A whale is as intelligent as we are, just in a way we can't quite measure or understand. Because we're these incredibly blunt instruments.

What was true empathy anyway but sometimes turning away, leaving someone alone?

Perhaps only I could truly make Wick a person, by forgiving him, and if I forgave him, if I showed I forgave him, then maybe we could be people together.

You forgive if you can forgive yourself. Or live with what you've done. If you cannot live with what you've done, you cannot live with what others have done either.

We must love what has been damaged, because everything has been damaged. And to love the damage is to know you care about that world. That you're still alive. That the world is alive.