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Empathy Quotes
"If a man is tongue-tied, don't laugh at him, but, rather, feel pity for him, as you would for a man with broken legs."
29
"It is unfortunate that many people today cannot realize the need around them."
28
"Beginning today, treat everyone you meet as if they were going to be dead by midnight. Extend to them all the care, kindness and understanding you can muster, and do it with no thought of any reward. Your life will never be the same again."
28
"I must turn myself around so that I am viewing life as my prospects see it. Only then can I start addressing their issues, help to prevent their pain, and advise on solutions to their problems."
28
"But she remembered having told Archer once that you could not measure love on a scale of degrees, and now she understood that it was the same with pain. Pain might escalate upward and, just when you thought you'd reached your limit, begin to spread sideways, and spill out, and touch other people, and mix with their pain. And grow larger, but somehow less oppressive. She had thought herself trapped in a place outside the ordinary feeling lives of people; she had not noticed how many people were trapped in that place with her."
26
"We can never judge the lives of others, because each person knows only their own pain and renunciation. It's one thing to feel that you are on the right path, but it's another to think that yours is the only path."
26
"The discoveries of how we can grow and the insights we need to have really come from the inside out. To have genuine empathy, not as a make-nice tool but as an understanding, is essential to the next step."
26
"You never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them."
25
"There are not a few among the disciples of charity who require, in their vocation, scarcely less excitement than the votaries of pleasure in theirs."
25
"But it's hard to explain, Mitch. Now that I'm suffering, I feel closer to people who suffer than I ever did before. The other night, on TV, I saw people in Bosnia running across the street, getting fired upon, killed, innocent victims... and I just started to cry. I feel their anguish as if it were my own. I don't know any of these people. But--how can I put this?--I'm almost... drawn to them."
25
"The struggle of my life created empathy - I could relate to pain, being abandoned, having people not love me."
24
"There's nothing wrong or evil about having a bad day. There's everything wrong with making others have to have it... with you."
23
"I just need to know that someone out there listens and understands and doesn't try to sleep with someone even if they could have. I need to know these people exist."
23
"Tears are a form of communication - like speech - and require a listener."
23
"Feel pity for the person who judged you rudely. For they are selfish in their judgment, trying to make their life feel just a little bit better. It was never about you it was all about them."
22
"We can't help everyone, but everyone can help someone."
21
"A woman who can't forgive should never have more than a nodding acquaintance with a man."
21
"I have a few friends who are confined to wheelchairs for access and mobility. I don't want to always be looking down at them while they are looking up at me. To enjoy a meaningful conversation, I'm quick to kneel beside them or pull up a chair to talk at the same height. Begin to recognize the orientation of other people and align yourself with their body position and physical needs so that you may connect on a more balanced and effective level."
20
"When we stake a claim to the needs and wants of our life, we may easily fail to live up to the standards of others. Empathy and connectedness, however, might bridge the gap, by stirring our consciousness of the sensitive queries and by assessing the intricate framework of our surroundings with their countless, prickly nitty-gritties. ['Absence of Desire']"
19
"Like officer Dave.He's never said much about his life, but I can tell he's scarred. And he knows I'm scarred too. The wounded always recognize the wounded. We can smell each other."
19
"I think that if I ever have kids, and they are upset, I won't tell them that people are starving in China or anything like that because it wouldn't change the fact that they were upset. And even if somebody else has it much worse, that doesn't really change the fact that you have what you have."
18
"Indeed, when I came to Italy, I expected to encounter a certain amount of resentment, but have received instead empathy from most Italians. In any reference to George Bush, people only nod to Berlusconi, saying","We understand how it is - we have one, too."
18
"To us post-moderns, empathy is a stranger in a strange land."
17
"You shouldn't judge someone until you've walk a mile through an underground tunnel in her uncomfortable shoes."
17
"It's not mind-reading,' she said. 'Not even an empathy link. Just - a temporary wave of exhaustion. Primal emotions. Your pain washes over me. I take on some of your burden.'Nico's expression became guarded. He twisted the silver skull ring on his finger, the same way Reyna did with her silver ring when she was thinking. Sharing a habit with the son of Hades made her uneasy."
16
"Cammie!' I'll never forget the tone of Macey's voice in that moment. 'Cam,' she said slowly, moving toward me, 'I know how it feels to be watched every second of every day. I know what it's like to trust fewer and fewer people until it seems like you are completely alone in the world. I know you think the only things that are left in your life are the bad things. I know what you're feeling, Cam.' Her hands were on my shoulders. Her blue eyes were staring into mine. 'I know."
16
"Don't judge someone's choices without first knowing their reason."
15
"Men who are afraid to feel must keep women around to do their feeling for them while dismissing us for the same supposedly "inferior" capacity to feel deeply. But in this way also, men deny themselves their own essential humanity, becoming trapped in dependency and fear."
14
"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."
13
"People talk and people listen, but very few care enough to help."
13
"Mirroring provides social cues through body language and behavior which enable us to develop more empathy and understanding for others."
13
"The tears of my eyes watered your heart but failed to evoke a response from the barren grounds of what beats in you. They will still come and I will welcome them because they contain you."
12
"I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the wounded person."
11
"It's just that you're about to do something out of the ordinary. And after you do something like that, the everyday look of things might seem to change a little. Things may look different to you than they did before. But don't let appearances fool you. There's always only one reality."
11
"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."
11
"He came up straight to her father, whose hands he took and wrung without a word - holding them in his for a minute or two, during which time his face, his eyes, his look, told of more sympathy than could be put into words."
11
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