Quotes About Empathy

It was always a bad sign when better-off types drew comparisons between unsightly ghetto populations and some animal or other, most especially those species that we had, reluctantly, to poison periodically. Why didn't people keep their lame excuses to themselves? Mick

Laurie: Her pain, her fears, her whole life, y' know? I mean, ordinary people, right? All the things that happen to them... doesn't that move you more than a bunch of rubble?

There's a hard law, mejuffrou, that when a deep injury is done to us, we never recover until we forgive.

What broke in a man when he could bring himself to kill another?

He went out of the door, and she watched him through the little window, walking slowly to the door of the church. Then she sat down at his table, and put her head on it, and was silent, with the patient suffering of black women, with the suffering of oxen, with the suffering of any that are mute.

Let me not be afraid to defend the weak because of the anger of the strong, nor afraid to defend the poor because of the anger of the rich.

I cannot stop you from thinking your thoughts. It is good that a young man has such deep thoughts. But hate no man, and desire power over no man.

His eyes fill with tears, his deep gentleness returns to him. He goes to her and lifts her from the floor to the chair. Inarticulately he strokes her face, his heart filled with pity.–God forgives us, he says. Who am I not to forgive? Let us pray.

Quando a felicidade é sua e a dor é do outro não há relação entre felicidade e dor?

Humanity is contagious.

He looked around, waiting for a reply, then shrugged and looked down at Vex. "You need better friends." "He's not my friend.

The better I can make the world, the better it is for the people in my life

but you're angry. Not with me, because no one could be angry with me, but with others.

will heal your wounds," he said, "but I will not facilitate your battles.

Of course not. It's only funny when it happens to other people. I'd have thought that was obvious.

Because I had gone through the same thing. I had tasted the darkness." "You'd 'tasted the darkness', had you?" "I'm allowed to have some poetry in my life, Valkyrie." "'Tasted the darkness, I swear to God... What, did you have a darkness sandwich, or was it a whole plate? What did you have for dessert? Was it pretentiousness? Did you have a bowl of pretentiousness for dessert?

They are begging us, you see, in their wordless way, To do something, to speak on their behalf Or at least not to close the door again. Lost people of Treblinka and Pompeii! "Save us, save us", they seem to say, "Let the god not abandon us Who have come so far in darkness and in pain. We too had our lives to live. You with your light meter and relaxed itinerary, Let not our naive labours have been in vain!

Initially [my favorite books] seem to immerse me in another life, but ultimately they immerse me in me; I am looking through the window into another person's home, but it is my face that I see in the reflection.

The mathematical challenge of finding the greatest good can expand the heart. Empathy opens the mind to suffering, and math keeps it open.

Each of us is leading a difficult life, and when we meet people we are seeing only a tiny part of the thinnest veneer of their complex, troubled existences. To practise anything other than kindness towards them, to treat them in any way save generously, is to quietly deny their humanity.

we are terrible at reading each other's thoughts. Yet we consistently behave as if we have been endowed with this entirely handsome ability.

You will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realise how seldom they do.

When I carry out my novice efforts to capture these, I feel both detached from the world (as any observer might do - especially when looking at it through a viewfinder) yet feel very connected to people around me. I am paying far more attention to them than normal; I'm far more interested in life. I'm attracted to people and the snapshots of life that show through their postures and faces.

My normal, regrettable practice of minimal eye contact and uncharitable pigeonholing is suspended in favor of a real fascination with everything human.