empathy Quotes

“Are you proud of yourself tonight that you have insulted a total stranger whose circumstances you know nothing about?”

“Jem, see if you can stand in Bob Ewell’s shoes a minute. I destroyed his last shred of credibility at that trial, if he had any to begin with. The man had to have some kind of comeback, his kind always does. So if spitting in my face and threatening me saved Mayella Ewell one extra beating, that’s something I’ll gladly take.”

“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view...until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”

“You children made Walter Cunningham stand in my shoes for a minute. That was enough.”

“Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts. I was better after I had cried, than before--more sorry, more aware of my own ingratitude, more gentle.”

“It is because I think so much of warm and sensitive hearts, that I would spare them from being wounded.”

“There is prodigious strength in sorrow and despair.”

“The more we diminish our own pain, or rank it compared to what others have survived, the less empathetic we are to everyone.”

“If empathy is the skill or ability to tap into our own experiences in order to connect with an experience someone is relating to us, compassion is the willingness to be open to this process.”

“If we can share our story with someone who responds with empathy and understanding, shame can’t survive.”

“Courage gives us a voice and compassion gives us an ear. Without both, there is no opportunity for empathy and connection.”

“When people talk listen completely. Don’t be thinking what you’re going to say. Most people never listen.”

“When your own life is threatened, your sense of empathy is blunted by a terrible, selfish hunger for survival.”

“And understanding begets empathy and compassion, even for the meanest beggar . . . ”

“Without suffering, there’d be no compassion.”

“Your tale, sir, would cure deafness.”

“A very important tidbit about customer service: just apologize to people. Even if it’s not your fault, they’ve been disappointed by the company you work for and it’s your job to empathize with them. Though you may be paid minimum wage, to the customers you are the face of the entire company. It’s this kind of accountability that gets people raises, promotions, and eventually careers.”

“O, I have suffered With those that I saw suffer.”

“Love is a verb. Love – the feeling – is the fruit of love the verb or our loving actions. So love her. Sacrifice. Listen to her. Empathize. Appreciate. Affirm her.”

“You can’t understand most of the important things from a distance, Bryan. You have to get close.”

“It is very difficult for a man to differentiate between empathy and sympathy. He hates to be pitied.”

“‘But please, please—won’t you—can’t you give me something that will cure Mother?’ Up till then he had been looking at the Lion’s great feet and the huge claws on them; now, in his despair, he looked up at its face. What he saw surprised him as much as anything in his whole life. For the tawny face was bent down near his own and (wonder of wonders) great shining tears stood in the Lion’s eyes. They were such big, bright tears compared with Digory’s own that for a moment he felt as if the Lion must really be sorrier about his Mother than he was himself. ‘My son, my son,’ said Aslan. ‘I know. Grief is great. Only you and I in this land know that yet. Let us be good to one another.‘”

“I had not thought before of this disfigured robber having had a childhood.”

“On a bad day you also don’t need a lot of advice. You just need a little empathy and affirmation. You need to feel once again that other people have confidence in you.”

“In front of him he distinguished a shadowy figure, motionless. ‘Wilbur Mercer! Is that you?’ My god, he realized; it’s my shadow.”

“An android doesn’t care what happens to another android. That’s one of the indications we look for.”

“Empathy, evidently, existed only within the human community, whereas intelligence to some degree could be found throughout every phylum and order including the arachnida.”

″ It, he thought. She keeps calling the owl it.”

“Courage, love, friendship, compassion, and empathy lift us above the simple beasts and define humanity.”

“It’s the recognition that other people’s problems, their pain and frustrations, are every bit as real as our own – often far worse. In recognizing this fact and trying to offer some assistance, we open our hearts and greatly enhance our sense of gratitude.”

“Who can listen to a story of loneliness and despair without taking the risk of experiencing similar pains in his own heart and even losing his precious peace of mind?”

“Thus, nothing can be written about ministry without a deeper understanding of the ways in which ministers can make their own wounds available as a source of healing.”

“Our service will not be perceived as authentic unless it comes from a heart wounded by the suffering about which we speak.”

“The main question is not ‘How can we hide our wounds?’ so we don’t have to be embarrassed, but ‘How can we put our woundedness in the service of others?’ ”

“As followers of Jesus we can also allow our wounds to bring healing to others.”

“In short: ‘Who can take away suffering without entering it?’ ”

“Love is something else entirely. It is caring. It is arguing with curiosity—It is giving an inch when the other seems certainly wrong—it is teasing, it is empathy, it is respect, it is a moment of quiet smiling admiration each morning.”

“Can you imagine how far they have come?”

“Because of these strong feelings and deep thoughts, most high sensitive children are unusually empathic. So they suffer more when others suffer and become interested early in social justice.”

“Empathy combined with stronger emotions leads to compassion.”

“Each of us has lived through some devastation, some loneliness, some weather superstorm or spiritual superstorm. When we look at each other we must say, I understand. I understand how you feel because I have been there myself. We must support each other because each of us is more alike then we are unalike. ”

“It was a dreadful thing that he did, and he is not to be admired for it, but right then I felt I understood why he did it. I even felt a little sorry for him. He probably just wanted some company, for it is very lonely knowing things.”

“I thought how you could never tell just by looking at them what they were thinking or what was happening in their lives.”

Equating willfulness with being special, the child then confronts other themes of life such as eternity and loneliness. The cat declares that he is immortal. The girl concludes that they are both willful. As the girl identifies with the cat they discuss some of life’s themes. Loneliness is seen in the mailman and dog. The girl attempts to show empathy, but the cat will have none of that. He does not show compassion and is irritated that the girl will not follow his lead in being pitiless.

“It’s easy to mistake understanding for empathy - we want empathy so badly. Maybe learning to make that distinction is part of growing up. It’s hard and ugly to know somebody can understand you without even liking you.”

“I think it’s easy to mistake understanding for empathy - we want empathy so badly. Maybe learning to make that distinction is part of growing up. It’s hard and ugly to know somebody can understand you without even liking you.”

“Though the friendship between the two never quite reaches the same level of realism, readers will empathize with Perdita, and with Megan when she is ultimately forced to choose.”

″‘How would you and Mom like it,’ Roy pressed on, ‘if a bunch of strangers showed up one day with bulldozers to flatten this house? And all they had to say was ‘Don’t worry, Mr. and Mrs. Eberhardt, it’s no big deal. Just pack up and move to another place.’ How would you feel about that?‘”

“If you approach a negotiation thinking the other guy thinks like you, you are wrong. That’s not empathy, that’s a projection.”

“The beauty of empathy is that it doesn’t demand that you agree with the other person’s ideas”

The vibrantly coloured and expressive illustrations and best of all the feelings of love, compassion and empathy that flow throughout the story.

“It also touches on the universal themes of friendship and empathy and includes kid-friendly mindfulness and self-compassion activities.”

“At that moment, they heard scratching and a soft cry. Esperanza peeked under the stairs and spotted a kitty shaking and shivering.”

“She had the power of silent sympathy. That sounds rather dull, I know, but it’s not so dull as it sounds. It just means that a person is able to know that you are unhappy, and to love you extra on that account, without bothering you by telling you all the time how sorry she is for you.”

“When I signed on with Guardian I took a vow of poverty. If my clients can survive on two bucks a day for food, the least I can do is cut every corner.”

And then Piglet did a Noble Thing, and he did it in a sort of dream, while he was thinking of all the wonderful words Pooh had hummed about him. “Yes, it’s just the house for Owl,” he said grandly. “And I hope he’ll be very happy in it.” And then he gulped twice, because he had been very happy in it himself.

The window was open, and he looked out at the well-kept grass beneath him, and the peaceful stretch of park beyond; and he felt very sorry for the owner of it all, who was now mixed up in so grim a business.

Antony was thinking of Miss Norbury’s feelings as a daughter, and wondering if she guessed that her affairs were now being discussed with a stranger. Yet what could he do? What, indeed, did he want to do except listen, in the hope of learning?

Anything that happened after that would be self-defense. I don’t mean that I excuse it, but that I understand it.

“I couldn’t help liking Cayley in a kind of way, you know.”

When he thought of that rapt light being quenched in her eyes he had an uncomfortable feeling that he was going to assist at murdering something—much the same feeling that came over him when he had to kill a lamb or calf or any other innocent little creature.

“Oh, I like things to have handles even if they are only geraniums. It makes them seem more like people. How do you know but that it hurts a geranium’s feelings just to be called a geranium and nothing else? You wouldn’t like to be called nothing but a woman all the time.”

“Just imagine how you would feel if somebody told you to your face that you were skinny and ugly,” pleaded Anne tearfully. An old remembrance suddenly rose up before Marilla. She had been a very small child when she had heard one aunt say of her to another, “What a pity she is such a dark, homely little thing.” Marilla was every day of fifty before the sting had gone out of that memory.

“I reckon she ought to be punished a little. But don’t be too hard on her, Marilla. Recollect she hasn’t ever had anyone to teach her right.”

“How perfectly lovely! You are able to imagine things after all or else you’d never have understood how I’ve longed for that very thing.

“Well, anyway, when I am grown up,” said Anne decidedly, “I’m always going to talk to little girls as if they were too, and I’ll never laugh when they use big words. I know from sorrowful experience how that hurts one’s feelings.”

The patience and the humility of the face she loved so well was a better lesson to Jo than the wisest lecture, the sharpest reproof.

Jo devoted herself to Beth day and night, not a hard task, for Beth was very patient, and bore her pain uncomplainingly as long as she could control herself.

He did not say to himself, “It is none of my business. I’ve no right to say anything,” as many people would have done. He only remembered that she was young and poor, a girl far away from mother’s love and father’s care, and he was moved to help her with an impulse as quick and natural as that which would prompt him to put out his hand to save a baby from a puddle.

“It is not good to think of anybody suffering,” she said, in a melancholy voice.

Alas, you, who would have been such a powerful protector to me in the days of your health and strength, can now only sympathize in my joys and sorrows, without being able to take any active part in them.

Heaven has not taken away all my blessings when it leaves me your sympathy and kindness.