Quotes About Empathy

This was a key moment in my life. I had always assumed that light carries farther than human voices and voices carry farther than body heat. But that night I realized it is not so, for when the people stand as one, their voices carry farther than light and their heat is carried farther still. That, I discovered, is what "the people" means.

Compassion is the divine compass

Insensitive people are only upset when they actually see the blood, but actually by the time that the blood has been shed the tragedy has already completed.

Kensuke and his wife had, like all bored people, a sense of kindness that was close to disease.

A un cuore che tenti di avvicinarsi, il cuore dell'altro sembra lontano

Besides, like a man who knows he is dying, he felt a need to be equally tender to all.

They avoided talk of the old days, like a pair weaving in and out among puddles after a rainstorm, so deftly that neither of them found the process awkward.

When we plot the happiness of another, we unconsciously impute to the other person what is in another form the dream in which our own happiness is fulfilled. Thus by not thinking of our own happiness we make it possible for ourselves to become egotistic.

He never made fun of her as her neighbors did. That was why she visited him. He felt in this mad, ugly woman five years his senior a comrade in apartness. He liked people who refused to recognize the world.

Avanzamos entre las víctimas sin recibir una mirada, ni siquiera de reproche. Se nos ignoraba. Simplemente por no haber compartido su desgracia, nuestra existencia había sido borrada de nuestras vidas. No éramos para ellos más que sombras.

It's not so much the harming of people's bodies I find objectionable, but of their hearts.

Don't ask things that don't concern you. After all, everybody has their own reasons.

My happiness lies in your hands. Be careful with it, won't you?

He integrado una delicada maquinaria para averiguar lo que sentiría de ser humano.

The group is a concept of uncommunicable shared suffering, a concept that ultimately rejects the agency of words.

Me siento responsable de la carne de esta mujer, pues me desgarra dulcemente como lo hacen otras cosas que son mías. Me estremece la dulzura de su presencia: cuando me sienta temblar se volcará como la hoja de un árbol sacudido por el viento y dejará que yo vea el lado vacío de sus ojos.

Your heart can become someone else's heart, too. I feel it. She and I are connected…! We're connected.

Who are you posing for? If you don't trust her to accept the bad with the good, why SHOULD she marry you? Look at you. Aren't you treating her like your favorite toy? A bauble to wear at your neck? Haven't you ever loved anyone before?

It depends on what's in your heart. Will this love make you oblivious to all around you? Abandoning all, hurting whatever's in your path? Or will it make you a more complete person? One who can feel love for ALL things? (Nagi to Sarasa)

To love the world is to be afflicted.

Unless we know ourselves and our history, and other people and their history, there is really no way that we can really have positive kinds of interaction where there is real understanding.

People who live in cold climes must keep warm by kindness," Orvo spoke softly in reply. "I think that is how every person should be. Kindness -- it's the same as having a head, a nose, a pair of feet . . . There are many nations living on the earth. Each of their people carries a seed of suspicion toward those not of their own tribe. Oftentimes, they won't even see the people of another tribe as real human beings. . . .

always forgive and be patient.

Happy will be those who take a lesson and warning from the mistakes and misfortunes of others and seek, nevertheless, to adopt the good they offer. Wisdom, wherever he finds it, it's a believer's goal, because he is more worthy of it than anyone else.