Best 1068 quotes in «empathy quotes» category

Understanding did not provide solace or make the pain go away; in many ways, understanding was just more salt in the emotional wound. Ignorance allowed one to fight back with unfettered cruelty. Understanding inspired empathy, which led to guilt, as well as suffering. She looked at Gavin, supine, unconcerned, contented, and thought that perhaps there was something to being a sociopath. If you didn't have a heart, it couldn't be broken.

Understanding that you can’t truly take credit for your successes, nor truly blame others for their failures will humble you and make you more compassionate. Empathy is intuitive, but is also something you can work on, intellectually.

Understanding is a creative act in a dimension we do not see.

Until you truly let go, until you truly form humility, can you find empathy and in that empathy you find contact and in that contact you find out who you truly are, and who the people are around you.

Very few people have ever experienced the feeling of being completely understood. When they experience it, it can become one of the richest feelings they have ever had.

Vielleicht wird unser Vorurteil auch dadurch bestärkt, daß es – von außen gesehen – oft vom Leben Begünstigte zu sein scheinen, […] denen wir daher sozusagen das Recht nicht zusprechen wollen, daß sie erkrankten; kennt man ihre Lebensgeschichte, wird man seine Meinung revidieren müssen; letztlich leiden wir alle an nicht genügend verarbeiteter Vergangenheit; bei wem sie so beschaffen war, daß er sein Leben dennoch fruchtbar gestalten konnte, weil er aus ihr mehr Hilfen als Schädigungen mitbekam, der sollte aus der Dankbarkeit dafür Verständnis und Toleranz gegenüber den weniger Glücklichen aufbringen.

Victoria was, at the time, far more empathetic and forgiving, chiding Albert for his narrow view of humanity. 'I always think that one ought always to be indulgent towards other people, as I always think, if we had not been well brought up and well taken care of, we might also have gone astray.

We all need salespeople with humility, honesty, integrity, empathy and an old-fashioned work ethic that ensures the job gets done.

We Americans pride ourselves on our freedom to speak, to say what we believe. But of what use is it to speak if only those who already agree with us listen? A first step toward the abolition of war is learning to listen with respect and sympathy.

We are all worth something,' she said. 'Zottas are not worth more than the rest of us. Self-Deception makes us into monsters. Selfishness is an excuse to busy your empathy. People are basically good. Live as though it was the first days of a better [nation].

We are in this together. None of us truly walk in isolation, even when we cannot sense the presence of another for miles upon miles. Even in the worst of our desolation. Even during our coldest 3am breakdown. Even when we shut out the world and spin in circles until we collapse. Even then the light still gets in. Even then the heart still opens and reaches, tendrils of hope curling and bending toward slivers of light. Upward, outward, in all directions – seeking light at all cost. One way or another, we all grow toward the light.

We are, or rather our natural desire to evade pain and to attain pleasure is, the primary reason we do or say every single thing we do or say.

We cannot expect to lift others unless we stand on higher ground ourselves.

We learn to become more empathic when we slow down, become present, and are fully committed to understanding another person’s uniqueness.

Well, we have a whole new year ahead of us. And wouldn't it be wonderful if we could all be a little more gentle with each other, a little more loving, and have a little more empathy, and maybe, next year at this time we'd like each other a little more.

We live close together and we live far apart. We all go through the same things-it's all just a different kind of the same thing.

We need to get to a place where we discuss privilege by way of observation and acknowledgment rather than accusation. We need to be able to argue beyond the threat of privilege. We need to stop playing Privilege or Oppression Olympics because we’ll never get anywhere until we find more effective ways of talking through difference. We should be able to say, “This is my truth,” and have that truth stand without a hundred clamoring voices shouting, giving the impression that multiple truths cannot coexist. Because at some point, doesn’t privilege become beside the point?

We weep for the blood of a bird, but not for the blood of a fish. Blessed are those who have voice.

We want the black-and-white picture, someone to blame. So we blame George Bush or Saddam Hussein, or black people or white people, or capitalism or communism, or the left or the right, or human nature, but reality is something else altogether. I could be any of those people. None of their behavior is anything I haven’t—on some scale—done myself. If you see that, and any real meditation work will reveal it to you beyond the shadow of a doubt, then you cannot possibly imagine that there is a “solution” to be found in fixing blame.

We want the people around us to show us a satisfactory measure of genuine empathy, but no one has any idea what that looks like. This puts everyone in the precarious position of guaranteed failure. I know that no one knows how to deal with stuff like this. There are no experts here.

What could anyone confess that would be worth anything or serve any useful purpose? What has happened to us has either happened to everyone or to us alone; if the former it has no novelty value and if the latter it will be incomprehensible.

Whales feel cohesion, a sense of community, of loyalty. The distress call of a lone whale is enough to prompt its entire pod to rush to its side- a gesture that lands them nose to nose in the same sand. It's a fatal symphony of echolocation, a siren call to the sympathetic.

What do you most get out of the artwork that you love the most? And answering my own question, I would hesitate to say that it is communing with someone else’s pain and frailty; it is the empathetic tear of another voice that is like yours but with more experience; it is your own adoration of a complex idea simply and acutely expressed. But chiefly it is that the work is located in the real.

We who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface hidden tension that is already alive

What dooms our best efforts to cultivate empathy and compassion is always, of course, other people.

What do you want to say to me?’ ‘Nothing—just to talk about the profession I am entering. I am about to practice virtue in order to find a man who loves it only to destroy it' [replied Mademoiselle Vesian.] ‘That is it exactly; and believe me, everything in this life is much the same. We refer everything to ourselves, and each of us is a tyrant. That is why the best of mortals is he who is tolerant.

What I Have Lived For Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a great ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair. I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy - ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness--that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined. This is what I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life, this is what--at last--I have found. With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved. Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate this evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer. This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me.

What is empathy, after all, if not an act of concentrated emotional engagement? And is that emotional engagement, however briefly expressed, not a potential step toward a lasting bond?

What is life? Life is living in this moment, experiencing and experimenting but experience isn’t life. Life is reflecting and meditating but reflection isn’t life. Life is helping and guiding but philanthropy isn’t life. Life is eating and drinking but food isn’t life. Life is reading and dancing but art isn’t life. Life is kissing and pleasuring but sex isn’t life. Life is winning and losing but competition isn’t life. Life is loving and caring but love isn’t life. Life is birthing and nurturing but children aren’t life. Life is letting go and surrendering but death isn’t life. Life is all these things but all these things aren’t life. Life is always more.

What makes a mother? Looking at your child and identifying emotion

What sticks with me more than even that act of kindness was how my mother talked to me about it... So I asked my mother why we gave those families gifts at Christmas when we ourselves didn't have much. I remember then answering for myself: "It was because we felt sorry for them, right?" "We do not feel sorry for them," my mother said sternly, "We understand how they feel.

What people don't understand about depression is how much it hurts. It's like your brain is convinced that it's dying and produces an acid that eats away at you from the inside, until all that's less is a scary hollowness. Your mind fills with dark thoughts; you become convinced that your friends secretly hate you, you're worthless, and then there's no hope. I never got so low as to consider ending it all, but I understand how that can happen to some people. Depression simply hurts too much.

When people say they are happy for you it may mean they are sad for themselves.

What we understand and love understands and loves us also.

When kids are unhappy, we don’t have to prop them up with frantic praise. It’s more helpful to say, "Ugh, you are not happy with the way that bicycle came out. It doesn't look like what you see in your head. It's not easy to draw a bike. It's hard to put something from real life onto a flat piece of paper and get it to look right.

When someone is suffering, there is a deep, visceral reaction in the core of our being, a flood of empathy and a frightfully desperate compulsion to give aid.

When someone is cruel, harsh, mean, to not take their words personally is one thing, but to hear the silent cry within those words is another. This sort of perspective can not only liberate us from crippling self-doubt in the face of criticism, it can also liberate us from automatically becoming blind participants in the interaction patterns that the cruel person has become accustomed to—a favour we do for the other person as much as for ourselves.

What you don’t realize is that the world does not need more perfection. It needs more compassion and empathy.

When anything and everything you ask for is handed to you, those hands seem to blur into nothingness and you forget they're alive just like you are.

When someone shares their distress or their inadequacies, the natural inclination is to comfort them. To mollify. When we do this we brush over their emotions, often because they make us uncomfortable. Most times, people don’t want a blanket. They want someone who is willing to stand outside and shiver with them in the cold.

When the positive revolution takes hold it will no longer be enough for politicians to gain points through attack or being negative. Politicians will be expected to be constructive.

When the world shifts its focus on heart over mind, we will finally experience a beautiful global village for our children.

When we are in constant pain, we cannot empathize with others, nor can we help them. It is only when we allow ourselves to open up to our own nourishment that we are free to feed the rest of the world. And thus, to attend to one's own suffering is the most selfless act.

When we see others cry it is difficult, not because of feeling their pain, but your own.

When we discriminate against the very people on whom we ought to have compassion, we lose empathy, become callous, and erode our own humanity.

When we give and receive empathy, transformation occurs.

When we say to someone, "Oh you're behaving like an animal," it's actually a compliment rather than an insult. We need to work for a science of peace and build a culture of empathy, and emphasize the positive, pro-social side of the character of other animals and ourselves. It's truly who we and other animals are.

When we see somebody in a difficult situation, we can understand them only if we had the same experience and had lived through it. Otherwise, we just think we know.

When we take into consideration the needs of both ourselves and others, we communicate honestly, compassionately and effectively.

When you can begin to see the similarities between you and your work colleagues in respect of ‘being human’ and the collective challenges we all face, it makes life much easier to deal with, especially when met with overbearing behaviour.