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"You can't love someone without imaginative sympathy, without beginning to see the world from another point of view. You can't be a good lover, a good artist or a good politician without this capacity (you can get away with it, but that's not what I mean). Show me the tyrants who have been great lovers."
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"The imagination doesn't crop annually like a reliable fruit tree. The writer has to gather whatever's there: sometimes too much, sometimes too little, sometimes nothing at all. And in the years of glut there is always a slatted wooden tray in some cool, dark attic, which the writer nervously visits from time to time; and yes, oh dear, while he's been hard at work downstairs, up in the attic there are puckering skins, warning spots, a sudden brown collapse and the sprouting of snowflakes. What can he do about it?"
Writing
"How do we seize the past? Can we ever do so? When I was a medical student some pranksters at the end-of-the-term dance released into the hall a piglet which had been smeared with grease. It squirmed between legs, evaded capture, squealed a lot. People fell over trying to grasp it, and were made to look ridiculous in the process. The past often seems to behave like that piglet."
Memory
"I know this much: that there is objective time, but also subjective time, the kind you wear on the inside of your wrist, next to where the pulse lies. And this personal time, which is the true time, is measured in your relationship to memory."
Time
"Altitude reduces all things to their relative proportions, and to the truth. Cares, remorse, disgust become strangers: How easily indifference, contempt, forgetfulness drop away...and forgiveness descends."
Wisdom
"There is violence in this supposedly tender heart of mine."
Emotion
"Opera cuts to the chase-as death does. An art which seeks, more obviously than any other form, to break your heart."
Art
"Reading is a majority skill but a minority art."
Education
"Is there anything more plausible than a second hand?"
Philosophy
"Arthur was frequently baffled by the complacency with which people went on with what they insouciantly called their lives, as if both the word and the thing made perfect sense to them."
Society
"Back then, things were plainer: less money, no electronic devices, little fashion tyranny, no girlfriends. There was nothing to distract us from our human and filial duty which was to study, pass exams, use those qualifications to find a job, and then put together a way of life unthreateningly fuller than that of our parents, who would approve, while privately comparing it to their own earlier lives, which had been simpler, and therefore superior."
Life
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"When good people consider you the bad guy, you develop a heart to help the bad ones. You actually understand them."
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Personal Development
"One of the greatest gifts we receive from dogs is the tenderness they evoke in us. The disappointments of life, the injustices, the battering events that are beyond our control, and the betrayals we endure, from those we befriended and loved, can make us cynical and turn our hearts into flint " on which only the matches of anger and bitterness can be struck into flame. By their delight in being with us, the reliable sunniness of their disposition, the joy they bring to playtime, the curiosity with which they embrace each new experience, dogs can melt cynicism,and sweeten the bitter heart."
Author Name
Personal Development
"Before complaining about your burden of life, you must first try to see what other people's burden of life is!"
Author Name
Personal Development
"Empathy isn't about you, understanding another person isn't about you, feeling how another person feels isn't about you... step outside of your own skin for a change. Respect another person because they are who they are; not because the other person is just like you. Your inability to understand, your inability to empathize, is not a fault on the part of the other person. It is in fact your own disability that you are choosing to live with."
Author Name
Personal Development
"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."
Author Name
Personal Development
"If writing novels - and reading them - have any redeeming social value, it's probably that they force you to imagine what it's like to be somebody else. Which increasingly is something we all need to know."
Author Name
Personal Development
"The empath helps others by absorbing some of their pain, but who helps the empath?"
Author Name
Personal Development
"If you can't see some part of yourself in every single person you encounter, then you're not looking closely enough, at the person or at yourself."
Author Name
Personal Development
"When someone is crying, of course, the noble thing to do is to comfort them. But if someone is trying to hide their tears, it may also be noble to pretend you do not notice them."
Author Name
Personal Development
"Empathize with others. You may easily get into a situation where you need the understanding of others."
Author Name
Personal Development
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