Quotes About Empathy

And therefore I looked down into the great pity of a person's life on this earth. I don't mean that we all end up dead, that's not the great pity. I mean that he couldn't tell me what he was dreaming, and I couldn't tell him what was real.

Talk into my bullet hole. Tell me I'm fine.

Will you believe me when I tell you there was kindness in his heart? His left hand didn't know what his right hand was doing. It was only that certain important connections had been burned through. If I opened up your head and ran a hot soldering iron around in your brain, I might turn you into someone like that.

What could be lonelier than trying to communicate?

We are supposed to forgive everyone; everyone includes ourselves.

I still recall clearly. Two doctors were talking to me about her in front of her, as though she couldn't comprehend the language. They then turned to her using baby talk.

Self-pity can breed self-destruction.

Love is this feeling that you would give anything for another. You would climb to the moon and steal the stars from the sky if she asked it. You want to shelter her and protect her, yes. But it's more than that. When you walk into a room, she is the first one you look for. Her laughter brightens your day, and when she is hurt, you are, too. It's the warm feeling that fills your soul when she is near. A mere touch of her hand sends you to your knees with wanting.

I have only known you about five months. But you know every piece of my life, all the ugly details. Now I'm asking you to trust me with yours—not because I want to know your stuff, but because I want to know you. What made you this amazing woman that you are, this woman that I've grown to admire and love. I want to know her story.

I love how books can transport you to another place. You get caught up in the characters' lives, and they become your friends. I guess I want to share my love of reading with others.

So ended a day many had dreaded," Natalie wrote in her diary on Christmas Day, "but by doing and thinking of others, we had forgotten self.

Life on the Reservation, he observed, was "particularly hard on those who lack a sense of humor.

Hugh Kenner, in a lecture, beautifully defined what poets seek if they really are poets) as "the power to make things as moving as the things they have been moved by.

It's when we face for a moment the worst our kind can do, and shudder to know the taint in our own selves, that awe cracks the mind's shell and enters the heart.

Step beyond right and wrong, and resist passing judgment. Who you've been and what you've experienced in the past isn't good . . . and it isn't bad. You might not know the whole story.

The world is an infinitely better place when we don't criticize the actions of others, but instead imagine walking in their shoes. Native Americans say: "Walk a mile in my moccasins.

Even if people do wrong, we're social animals, so what can we do about stopping them doing the same things in future? Saying people are 'bad' or 'evil' is just an unwillingness to engage an unwillingness to try to empathise. That sanctimonious attitude doesn't help anyone.

They were all performing the same miracle: repairing the insult of their own childhoods by making it all right for her. Murray

Vince went over to Skye. "I shouldn't have pressed her so hard," she admitted, whispering. "This could be the thing that pushes Aunt Minnie around the bend." He put his arm around her shoulder. "Don't blame yourself. She's had that turn signal on for twenty years.

War can be so impersonal yet when we put a name, a face, a place and match it to families, then war is not impersonal.

Happiness doesn't lie in conspicuous consumption and the relentless amassing of useless crap. Happiness lies in the person sitting beside you and your ability to talk to them. Happiness is clear-headed human interaction and empathy. Happiness is home. And home is not a house-home is a mythological conceit. It is a state of mind. A place of communion and unconditional love. It is where, when you cross its threshold, you finally feel at peace.

There are so many more important things to worry about than how you're perceived by strangers.

The brain controls pain. It controls fear. Sleep. Empathy. Hunger. Everything we associate with the heart or the soul or the nervous system is actually controlled by the brain. Everything. What if you could control it?

Sympathy's easy. You have sympathy for starving children swatting at flies on the late-night commercials. Sympathy is easy because it comes from a position of power. Empathy is getting down on your knees and looking someone else in the eye and realizing you could be them, and that all that separates you is luck.