Quotes About Empathy

When we cannot cure or save a life, our patients can at least feel cared for. It should be a basic human right." Harris

missed four words

You monkey, you, I wanted to say, and I reached hungrily for his hand, our fingers interlocking. You should laugh more, it suits you: see how the furrows around your brow vanish and your ears ease back?

God will judge us, Mr. Harris, by"—her voice broke as she thought of Sister Mary Joseph Praise—"by what we did to relieve the suffering of our fellow human beings. I don't think God cares what doctrine we embrace." The

There's no currency to straighten a warped spirit, or open a closed heart, a selfish heart

What treatment in an emergency is administered by ear? Words of comfort.

When they turn in, he says, "It must be so hard to see such suffering every day." He shudders. "I couldn't do it. Only luck and the grace of God keeps us free of such afflictions. We're so blessed, aren't we?

Forgive me," she says now. "For what?" "For everything. Sometimes we can wound each other in ways we don't intend.

you forgave me long ago. Why would I not do the same? So, whatever it is, I forgive you." She rises, touches his cheek, kisses him on his forehead

God will judge us by what we did to relieve the suffering of our fellow human beings. I don't think God cares what doctrine we embrace.

question," not push for the answer.

Flattery isn't the right word for his portrait. It's empathy—the same quality in the sculptures that surround them. The ancient artists were devotees above all else. Without love of their subject, they'd just be cutting stone; their adoration is what brings it to life.

Abraham Verghese

He alone amongst all the people she knows uses his two ears and one mouth in that exact proportion. She loves him in a way she

there was never anything healing one could say. One could only be. The best friends in such times were those who had no agenda other than to be present, to offer themselves

Thomas Christian ladies attend his clinic as faithfully as they attend church, presenting him their aches and pains that are often surrogates for chronic marital woes—he offers placebos and sympathetic homilies, such as "Mullu elayil vinallum, ela mullel vinallum, elakka nashttam." Whether the thorn falls on the leaf, or the leaf falls on the thorn, the leaf suffers. "Aah, aah, you're so right, doctor. My husband is a thorn only, what to do?

Mirad had asked for peace for his birthday. Imagine, a boy of thirteen who asks for peace as a birthday present. When I heard that I cried.

I want to give you something, or I want to take something from you. But I want to feel the exchange, the warm hand on the shoulder, the song coming out and the ear holding onto it.

All I've been working on is napping, and maybe being kinder to others, to myself.

I saw a mom take her raincoat off and give it to her young daughter when a storm took over the afternoon. My god, I thought, my whole life I've been under her raincoat thinking it was somehow a marvel that I never got wet.

Caring for each other is a form of radical survival that we don't always take into account.

It is what we do in order to care for things, make them ourselves, our elders, our beloveds, our unborn. But perhaps that is a lazy kind of love. Why can't I just love the flower for being a flower? How many flowers have I yanked to puppet as if it was easy for the world to make flowers?

I have always been too sensitive, a weeper from a long line of weepers. I am the hurting kind. I keep searching for proof.

crossed-legged with my friend named Echo who taught me how to amplify the strange sound the frogs made by cupping my ears. I need to hold this close within me, when today's news is full of dead children, their faces opening their mouths for air that will not come. Once I was a child too and my friend and I sat for maybe an hour, eyes adjusting to the night sky, cupping and uncapping our ears to hear the song the tenderest animals made.