Quotes About Empathy

The problem is - we own our lives, sure. But our lives don't belong only to us. And yet, we are here to tell our stories in this way to make sense of our lives. So how do you tell a story when you know that telling it will bring other people sorrow? Is it better, in the end, to just be silent?

Having an opinion about transsexuality is about as useful as having and opinion on blindness. You can think whatever you like about it, but in the end, your friend it still blind and surely deserves to see.

That's what I learned. Everybody's black and blue, somewhere. I never met anybody who wasn't." "Not like me." "No," said Shannon. "Everybody gets broken all their own way." She smiled bitterly. "That's what makes you, you: the pieces you're smashed into aren't like anybody else's. They're all yours.

Generosity of the heart is the most valuable asset you can have.

Peace begins in each person's heart and then is passed on to the people they love most. Then they pass it on until everyone has peace in their heart.

In order to be a good help on someone's journey toward transformation, you need to understand the world as he sees the world, not as you see him.

Sometimes you stop seeing what the person is to the world. You only see what the person is to you.

It's just like Darren to worry about poor people in China while giving no thought to poor people in America, who need Walmart because they can't afford to shop anywhere else—a losers' club Rich feels, eternally, on the brink of joining, if he hasn't already.

Preventing her abortion was all they cared about. The bleak struggle of her life—the stark daily realities that made motherhood impossible—didn't trouble them at all.

A fetus had no thoughts or memories; it had made nothing, understood nothing. And yet, this mute, unthinking knot of tissue—alive, yes, but unformed, unconscious, incapable of tenderness or reasoning or even laughter—was the life that mattered. The woman carrying it, the complex creature formed by twenty or thirty years of living in the world, was simply the means of production. Her feelings about the matter, her particular ideas and needs and desires, didn't matter at all.

I open my heart to her and lay it on the table.

The starving, the unwanted old and unborn, the criminal, those of wrong color, ideology, sex, nation, class—whatever category renders a person least in our minds—bear the face of Jesus.

My people are crumbling and dying and starving, and you're blessing blessed people and serving the saved.

Jesus didn't, and we shouldn't. He doesn't need us to stick up for him; he needs us to represent him, to be like him, to look like him and to talk like him, to be with people that he would be with, and to take the side of the "ignorant" instead of those in the "know."[91]

In all our efforts, if we are not about people, our labors aren't really about Jesus but about us.

It's about building bridges with those who won't come to us on Sunday, not as a project but because Jesus loves them and told us to. It's a dangerous journey that requires honesty and vulnerability.

mail-outs. As missionaries have always understood, the key is to study the culture you are passionate about reaching and submerge into that space with respect and love.

We launch public shame grenades with abandon and claim to "love the sinner but hate the sin," which translates to "we are enormous pompous jerks.

You haven't locked yourself in any rooms or rocked in any corners, right?" I rolled my eyes and began walking again. No Daemon, but thanks for making sure I'm mentally sound and all.

There was a pause, then his lips stretched into a smile. "You're right." Hell froze over. Pigs were flying. "Come again?" "You're right. I should have checked in at some point. I'm sorry." The world was flat. I didn't know what to say. According to Daemon, he was right about 99 percent of the time. Wow.

There is nothing, my boy, to spark compassion like a sojourn in hell.

There is nothing, my boy, to spark compassion like a sojourn in hell." In

Children's behavior that we find disruptive or hurtful isn't "mis" anything. We may find it annoying, troubling, or infuriating, but it isn't intrinsically "bad" or "wrong." On the contrary, a child's behavior is exceedingly accurate. It is at once a true expression of their need at a particular moment as well as a reflection of their current ability to meet that need.

If you don't love yourself, you can't love anybody else. And I think as women we really forget that.