Quotes About Empathy

There is no such thing as a hurt that is too small to matter when emotional closeness is at stake.

It is when we find points of connection to the foreign that we are able to grow.

Hopper invites us to feel empathy with the woman in her isolation. She seems dignified and generous, only perhaps a little too trusting, a little naive—as if she has knocked against a hard corner of the world. Hopper puts us on her side, the side of the outsider against the insiders. The figures in Hopper's art are not opponents of home per se; it is simply that in a variety of undefined ways, home appears to have betrayed them, forcing them out into the night or onto the road.

We should add: it is a privilege to be the recipient of a sulk; it means the other person respects and trusts us enough to think we should understand their unspoken hurt. It is one of the odder gifts of love. Eventually

It is precisely when we hear little from our partner which frightens, shocks, or sickens us that we should begin to be concerned, for this may be the surest sign that we are being gently lied to or shielded from the other's imagination, whether out of kindness or from a touching fear of losing our love. It may mean that we have, despite ourselves, shut our ears to information that fails to conform to our hopes—hopes which will thereby be endangered all the more. Rabih

We must live with our enemies as if they might one day become our friends, and live with our friends as if they might some time or other become our enemies'.

We should add: it is a privilege to be the recipient of a sulk; it means the other person respects and trusts us enough to think we should understand their unspoken hurt.

É um sinal de que duas pessoas tenham parado de amar uma a outra (ou pelo menos parado de desejar fazer o esforço que constitui noventa por cento do amor)quando não são mais capazes de transformar diferenças em piadas.

My dear friend, I may be dense,' replied Humblot after having taken a brief and clearly bewildering glance at the opening of the novel, 'but I fail to see why a chap needs thirty pages to describe how he tosses and turns in bed before falling asleep.

One of the privileges of being on our own is therefore the sincere impression that we are really quite easy to live with

How kind we would be if we managed to import even a little of this instinct into adult relationships—if here, too, we could look past the grumpiness and viciousness and recognize the fear, confusion, and exhaustion which almost invariably underlie them. This is what it would mean to gaze upon the human race with love.

Singurii oameni care înc? ni se par normal sunt cei pe care nu-i cunoaÈ™tem îndeajuns. Cel mai bun leac pentru iubire e s? apuc?m s?-i cunoaÈ™tem mai bine.

PuÈ›ini oameni sunt pur È™i simplu nesuferiÈ›i; cei care r?nesc sunt la rândul lor r?niÈ›i. În aceste condiÈ›ii, reacÈ›ia cuvenit? nu e niciodat? cinismul sau agresiunea, ci, în rarele momente când suntem în stare de ea, iubirea.

Curajul de a nu fi înfrânt de anxietate, de a nu-i r?ni pe alÈ›ii din frustrare, de-a nu se înfuria prea mult pe lume pentru r?nile vizibile pe care le provoac?, de-a nu înnebuni È™i de-a reuÈ™i cumva s? treac?, mai bine sau mai r?u, prin greut??ile c?sniciei - acesta e adev?ratul curaj, acesta e eroismul care nu poate fi comparat cu nimic.

Such intimate communion between our own life and the novels we read may be why Proust argued: In reality, every reader is, while he is reading, the reader of his own self. the writer's work is merely a kind of optical instrument which he offers to the reader to enable him to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have experienced in himself. And the recognition by the reader in his own self of what the book says is the proof of its veracity.

His accent is kind of irresistible, she says. It makes him feel a little lonely to realise how easy it is to be liked by someone who has no idea who he is.

Most of what makes a book good is that we are reading it at the right moment for us.

Booksellers are the most valuable destination for the lonely, given the numbers of books that were written because authors couldn't find anyone to talk to.

a lack of love: between a man and a woman is the announcement that what they might produce would only be a badly organized, unhappy being, wanting in harmony in itself.

Friends afford us a change to express our deepest selves, and that the conversations we have with them are a privileged forum in which to say what we really think and, by extension and with no mystical allusion, be who we really are.

I found myself wishing that the rest of mankind would follow the engineers' example and agree on a series of symbols which could point incontrovertibly to certain elusive, vaporous and often painful psychological states — a code which might help us feel less tongue-tied and less lonely, and enable us to resolve arguments with swift and silent exchanges of equations.

Being political doesn't only or principally mean caring what party wins the next election; to be political is to care about the happiness of strangers.

In light of all he understands about himself and the course of love, he can see that the kindest thing he can do to someone he truly likes is to get out of the way fast.

There is usually a Marxist moment in every relationship, the moment when it becomes clear that love is reciprocated.