Quotes About Empathy

Sometimes insight into character and dialogue means being silent.

Also, Moss liked to rescue whatever animal or plant needed it. She believed they had earned it.

Gerard turned away and ignored the cruelty of the meerkats, tore it from his mind. Lucretia needed a heart.

The thing about people who wanted to show you things was that sometimes their interest in granting you knowledge was laced with a little voyeuristic sadism. They were waiting for the Look or the Reaction, and they didn't care what it was so long as it inflicted some kind of discomfort.

Empathy is a losing game

That's the problem with people who are not human. You can't tell how badly they're hurt, or how much they need your help, and until you ask, they don't always know how to tell you.

I mourned the child I had known who was kind and sweet and curious, and yet could not stop killing.

So she sang back silently to them, as a comfort, there in the cell, and when the moonlight lay thick and bright against the gritty cheek of the sand dune, the foxes would gambol and prance for the sheer delight of it and beckon her to join them, would let her into their minds that she might know what it was to gambol and to prance on those four legs, then these four legs, to see the world from a fox's level. It was almost like flying. Almost.

He that feels pure, let him cast the first stone.

I was in love with everything- I wanted to look with love at the angry people so that their eyes would be forced to respond; and I wanted to bring gifts to the envious and tell them that I am worthless.

Her only weapons were her tears.

Not only must a warrior be strong with his bow, but he must have a heart full of pity for all living creatures.

Since God forgives us for all the stupid, thoughtless, mean things we do and say, we should forgive others. If God never forgave anyone, Heaven would be empty. -Bindi

Very well. I understand. Just ... shut up!

One learns a good deal in the school of suffering. I wonder what would have happened to me if I had had an easy life, and had not had the privilege of tasting the joys of jail and all it means. ~ Badsha Khan, quote in Nonviolent Soldier of Islam, p. 87

Live only for yourself and you will never grow; live for the welfare of all those around you and you will grow to your full stature.

To love, we need to be sensitive to those around us, which is impossible if we are racing through life engrossed in all the things we need to do before sunset. In fact, I would go to the extent of saying that a person who is always late will find it difficult to love; he will be in too much of a hurry.

What does she think it feels like, having everybody telling you you're strange, you're different, you don't go along with the crowd, you don't play what we like to play, you don't think what we think, what's wrong with you? As if it never occurs to them that there might be something wrong with them. It feels like claws ripping you to pieces. And if you don't believe you can rise from the fire, then you'll just shrivel up and die inside

HSPs make such good targets because we react so strongly.

Even a moderate and familiar stimulation, like a day at work, can cause an HSP to need quiet by evening.

Whatever the times, suffering eventually touches every life. How we live with it, and help others to, is one of the great creative and ethical opportunities

Finally, being sensitive to the discomfort, disapproval, or anger of others probably made you quick to follow every rule as perfectly as possible, afraid to make a mistake.

Sometimes people with our trait are said to be less happy or less capable of happiness. Of course, we can seem unhappy and moody, at least to non-HSPs, because we spend so much time thinking about things like the meaning of life and death and how complicated everything is—not black-and-white thoughts at all. Since most non-HSPs do not seem to enjoy thinking about such things, they assume we must be unhappy doing all that pondering. And

to have great pain is to have certainty; to hear that another person has pain is to have doubt.