Quotes About Empathy

Whoever decided that love should hurt sucks. It's been silent for too long, and I watch as Mom wipes a tear off her cheek. Whoever decided that life should hurt sucks even more.

She's not a straight-A student, but she's also not stupid. She just thinks she is, which sucks in ways that make me want to do horrible, vile things to whoever made her feel that way.

The other shoppers were too well behaved to stare at the green-headed stoner and the tear-streaked lady zigzagging up the aisles with a chubby bearded guy scurrying behind them picking up the things they dropped.

She lifted the girl's shirt, showing her ribs and the pointy bumps of her spine. They were like the bones of some animal who'd starved to death in the desert. Her flesh, the dark sand blown in thin drifts over the bones.

I really do think that if for one week in the United States we saw the true face of war, we saw people's limbs sheared off, we saw kids blown apart, for one week, war would be eradicated. Instead, what we see in the U.S. media is the video war game.

But my experience is that people who have been through painful, difficult times are filled with compassion.

I want to know everything about you, so I tell you everything about myself.

Since his mother died I have seen him steam a cucumber thinking it was zucchini. That's the kind of thing that turns my heart right over.

consolation is a beautiful word. everyone skins his knee-that doesnt make yours hurt anyless.

And that one part can make an enormous difference in the lives of others, especially when we commit to a life of spiritual wholeness that's represented by looking inward with our hearts (inner disciplines affect how we see others); looking outward with our eyes (how we see others affects how we treat others); and finally, by using what we've learned practically, with our hands.

Well, you know, I'm passionate about that. I just feel that we need to help children from the earliest time to realize that there are ways that they can express how they feel, ways that aren't hurtful.

To make others feel more human, Fred sought to see their Maker in them and then to treat them accordingly.

When our children were old enough to communicate, I would try to talk them out of their negative feelings—or convince them there was no foundation for them. But what I found out is that suppressing feelings has the same fate as trying to suppress a beachball in the ocean—they both come out sideways.

Just as he heralded the importance of expressing other kinds of emotions, Fred felt it essential to give others permission to grieve over the losses in their lives. He learned that lesson himself when he was six years old.

If the world could know that we don't have to put people in concentration camps and annihilate people just because we're angry with them. And the anger probably goes back for centuries. If we could just know that.

Fred Rogers' spiritual answer to how we "treat bad people" is much more far-reaching than the psychology behind sublimation

inner disciplines affect how we see others); looking outward with our eyes (how we see others affects how we treat others); and finally, by using what we've learned practically, with our hands.

The world needs to learn to know what to do with negative feelings," he told me, explaining his motivation for writing the song. "It's so easy to pick up a gun and shoot somebody. It's so much healthier—and so much more dramatic—to work out something interpersonally with somebody and to come to a resolution that means weal in both people's life.

Fred Rogers was always saying things like that to the people around him: "How blessed your wife is to have you for a husband!" "How blessed your colleagues are to have you to work with!" "How blessed your children are!

Then, once we are able to see the image of God in our neighbors, once we recognize their inherent value, we strive to help them become who they were meant to be.

If there's anything that bothers me, it's one person demeaning another. That really makes me mad!

Fred was patient with me in the years that followed our first meeting. He taught me that taking one's time, especially in relationships, allows the other person to know he or she is worth the time.

There is one thing that evil cannot stand, and that's forgiveness.

If parents can remember what it was like to be a child, they are going to be much more empathic with their own children.