Best 1068 quotes in «empathy quotes» category

Fear trumps empathy.

Females and boys are the only creatures that propose others for friendship. As for the rest of us, friendship sort of just happens.

First, we just acknowledge that it is there inside us. If we don’t listen to our own suffering, we won’t understand it, and we won’t have compassion for ourselves. Compassion is the element that helps heal us. Only when we have compassion for ourselves, can we truly listen to another person.

For a society to function successfully, perhaps there needs to be a level of empathy that cannot be corrupted.

For every decision a 'man' makes, he makes it with the best of the depth of knowledge he possess at that particular instant and the quality of experiences he's passed through. It's not an excuse though for mediocrity, but an avenue to learn, rise, and conquer your inefficient self. By inference, beyond an extreme line, there might not necessarily be a qualification of a choice as wrong or right, but an avenue to grow depending on how the intricacies of such a choice and its consequences are handled.

Forgiveness is a transformative act because it asks you to be a more empathetic and compassionate person, thereby making you better than the person you were when you were first hurt.

For some, life may be a playground to undermine the brainwaves of others or simply a vainglorious game with an armory of theatrics, illustrating only bleak self-deception, haughty narcissism and dim deficiency in empathy. ("Another empty room")

For those constantly full of joy, they sometimes feel a little guilty for always feeling so good. That guilt is compassion: it flies in with an attempt to share one's joy with others who do not have it.

Freedom, influence and impact first, expansion second.

Giving and empathy provide us with opportunities to nurture our innate goodness.

God hates sin not because he wants us to be good little boys and girls, but because he knows sin destroys that which he loves most: sinners.

God is that force that drives us to really see each other and to really behold each other and care for each other and respond to each other. And for me, that is actually enough. That cultivating it, that thinking about it, worshipping it, working towards it, taking care of it, nurturing it in myself, nurturing it in other people, that really is a life’s work right there, and it doesn’t have to be any bigger than that. God doesn’t have to be out in the next solar system over bashing asteroids together. It’s plenty, just the God that I work with.” Kate Braestrup

God only knows the torment of the suffering soul and only he can take away the pain.

Good and bad are illusions. What exists is either the presence of empathy or the lack of it. I think this should become the new, clear definition of how we see people. No more "good" and no more "bad". Those terms are highly subjective.

Good begets good. Calm begets calm. It isn´t the child who is bad; it is the action that is bad.

Good writers always have a strong sense of who they are and who they are not. Like actors, their boundaries are strong, and fluid. They have a deep understanding of the human condition, and an empathy that is not so diffuse that it is diluted.

Good conversation comes form just such flexibility. As observations come up, it meanders, following a course that tends in a particular direction, but moves responsively in new directions as associations are triggered, words are paused over to consider their implications, examples are invented, connections are made. Like jazz, it is a work of improvisation that entails listening intently for what the others are doing and moving with them. The curiosity which sustains that intensity pauses at every turn to notice what's happening, to raise new questions and pursue them. In a gentle pursuit of ideas, it makes room for the unexpected. Exercised in this way, curiosity becomes an avenue of grace. Conversation pursued in this spirit is full of surprise. It connects one idea or thought or analogy with another in ways that could not have been predicted.

Half the point in reading novels and seeing plays and films is to exercise the faculty of sympathy with our own kind, so often obliterated in the multifarious controls and compulsions of actual social existence.

Have greater compassion and empathy for others, and don't judge anyone, because you have no idea what's going on in their life.

For the merest moment I couldn't breathe. Something inside me quivered, some oud string plucked by his words, and if I breathed it would stop. He did not know the truth of me, yet he had perceived something true about me that no one else had ever noticed. And in spite of that—or perhaps because of it—he believed me good, believed me worth taking seriously, and his belief, for one vertiginous moment, made me want to be better than I was.

Hearing has consequences. When I truly hear a person and the meanings that are important to him at that moment, hearing not simply his words, but him, and when I let him know that I have heard his own private personal meanings, many things happen. There is first of all a grateful look. He feels released. He wants to tell me more about his world. He surges forth in a new sense of freedom. He becomes more open to the process of change. I have often noticed that the more deeply I hear the meanings of the person, the more there is that happens. Almost always, when a person realize he has been deeply heard, his eyes moisten. I think in some real sense he is weeping for joy. It is as though he were saying, "Thank God, somebody heard me. Someone knows what it's like to be me.

Help your child see others' emotions as well as experiencing his or her own without imposing your judgment.

He can’t tell if Hal is sad. He is having a harder and harder time reading Hal’s mind or whether he’s in good spirits. This worries him. He used to be able to sort of pre-verbally know in his stomach generally where Hal was and what he was doing, even if Hal was far away and playing or if Mario was away, and now he can’t anymore. Feel it. This worries him and feels like when you’ve lost something important in a dream and you can’t even remember what it was but it’s important. Mario loves Hal so much it makes his heart beat hard. He doesn’t have to wonder if the difference now is him or his brother because Mario never changes.

He'd always known that shit rolled downhill, but he never knew tears did the same thing.

Her father dropped her off in front of the place where she was to live and left the engine running. Lila Mae removed the two suitcases from the back of the pickup truck. The suitcases were new, with a formidable casing of green plastic. Scratchproof, supposedly. Her father had only been able to afford them because they were, manufacturer's oats aside, scratched — gouged actually, as if an animal had taken them in its fangs to teach them about hubris.

He who has little problems, shows little love. He who has overcome huge problems, has giant love. Because he understands what it means and won’t have others suffer like he did.

He was thinking, no doubt, that this man, whose name is Jean Valjean, had his misfortune only too vividly present in his mind; that the best thing was to divert him from it, and to make him believe, if only momentarily, that he was a person like any other, by treating him just in his ordinary way. Is not this indeed, to understand charity well?

Here we are, you and I, and I hope that Christ makes a third with us. No one can interrupt us now... So come now, dearest friend, reveal your heart and speak your mind." (p. 29)

Hey. You heard what Rock said. I know how you feel. We can help you shoulder this" "Do you really?" Rlain said. "Do you actually know how I feel, Kaladin Stormblessed? Or is that simply a thing that men say?" "I guess it's a thing men say," Kaladin admitted, then pulled over an upside-down bucket for himself. "Can you tell me how it feels?

Hope becomes an option only when we get involved. Empathy must influence the nature of our interactions. And we must remember that compassion is contagious. The more we spread it, the more the people around us are gonna feel it and cherish it. And the more we see it elsewhere, the more it becomes attainable where we are.

How convenient it is to declare that everything is totally ugly within the habit of the époque, rather than applying oneself to extract from it the dark and cryptic beauty, however faint and invisible it is.

How did I learn empathy? I learned it while suffering. How did I learn about karma? Because it came back to me and I deserved it. I now know when any hurt I experience is due to circumstances outside of my control, karma, or self-imposed consequences for foolish choices. I do feel justice is served if karma humbles someone who needs it, and as anyone who has been wronged can attest, what they seem to want most is for the offending party to experience how it feels and to know in that moment exactly what they did to someone else and to be filled with remorse and hopefully, repentance.

His face had been twisted into an expression of every agony he had imagined for his friend.

How does one develop compassion for someone with a completely different set of values without reading something from their point of view? Books are one of the ways in which we can truly get into the heads of people we would never meet in our ordinary lives and travel to countries we would otherwise never visit.

Humans pursuing deep, complete connections respond to quite different incentives from those that influence self-interested utility maximizers. Rewards, monitoring, and punishments are less likely to be effective than engagement, communication, norms, socialization, identity, and common purpose. They share not out of a calculation of reciprocity but from a psychological pleasure in sharing. Those seeking connections make decisions from their hearts as well as their heads, influenced by emotion, fairness, empathy, and intuition. Their behavior, thoughts, feelings, and even personal attributes are highly socially contingent. The range of humanity includes individuals who display every possible combination of selfishness and sociability.

Humility helps us come to terms with what we cannot know. Patience takes the edge off when the hurt continues. Empathy is the gift that connects us with others. Forgiving ourselves for having such perfectly human reactions is harder than forgiving whatever caused them.

His feelings were too much for speech, and suddenly he broke down.

How is it possible that suffering that is neither my own nor of my concern should immediately affect me as though it were my own, and with such force that is moves me to action?

How much of assumed national and personal character comes from the fact that we have never truly known need to the point of having our character tested? Willing conscientious objectors underwent controlled starvation and confirmed how quickly it impacts the initiative and generosity we like to think of as "American" characteristics.

How often have our own tears blinded us to the tears of others.

Humans are unique in having the astonishing capacity to extend our sympathies far beyond the here and now. through time and space, to anywhere and anything we choose. It is our culture that decides how large and inclusive our moral circle is, but it is each of us who makes up our culture. (p.250)

Humans have long since possessed the tools for crafting a better world. Where love, compassion, altruism and justice have failed, genetic manipulation will not succeed.

Humans seem to have a really hard time learning from their own mistakes. History is often forgotten, warnings from the past not heeded. But we do enjoy a good story or two. So how about learning from the future? Jew-ish Sci-Fi is a prophetic genre. Lot’s of people write in it. Lot’s of people enjoy reading it…even the ones who focus on werebears…

Hurting someone will not impress them. Intelligence requires empathy to work. Water is wet. The sky is pink through these rose-tinted glasses.

I am an artist, and a rebel one at that. I live in the voluptuous dimension of imagination, so if you're expecting normalcy (dullness) from me, sorry to disappoint, but you're quite mistaken. Ordinary is not my best attire, I've tried it and normal just never fit quite right. I will always be the crazy one who believes in magic, unicorns and impossible dreams. But also love, compassion and empathy.

I am because I feel.

I am not an atheist. But the religion that I do advocate is not of the Bible, Vedas, Quran or any other scripture. The religion I speak of, is what Christ talked about, it is what Buddha talked about, it is the religion of plain everyday kindness.

I am not an ornithologist—I am a bird.

I am noticing a big difference in the way the hospital workers are looking at me as I approach Jess’s room. The look of sincere sympathy that used to be on their faces when they made eye contact with me is gone. It has been replaced by shear helplessness as they quickly walk past me with their heads tilted down and to the right. I feel like Bud Fox walking into his office with the Securities and Exchange Commission awaiting him.

I am not sure that you can be taught how to love. In many ways it is innate - just watch and see what small child effortlessly does. But you can be invited to it and reminded of it.