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Empathy Quotes
"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?"
6
"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."
6
"Still, this was on the order of a minor miracle, running across someone to whom you can express your feeling so clearly, so completely. Most people go their entire lives without meeting a person like that. It would have been mistake to label this "love". It was more like total empathy."
6
"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."
6
"Her feelings were very acute, and too little understood to be properly attended to. Nobody meant to be unkind, but nobody put themselves out of their way to secure her comfort."
6
"Electric communication will never be a substitute for the face of someone who with their soul encourages another person to be brave and true."
6
"Tears are a form of communication - like speech - and require a listener."
6
"You decide. You be the judge. It says You are welcome regardless of severity. Severity is in the eye of the sufferer, it says. Pain is pain."
5
"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."
5
"If you see a person who is suffering from misery and sadness, wash it away with your compassion and kindness."
5
"He asked me for a light to light his cigarette, and by reason of unaware, it is he that really gave light to me, made me realize how much alike we all are, breathing the same air, beating the same red blood, separated through some fortune and shame in the way of humanity."
5
"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."
5
"We make ourselves large or small, here or there, in our empathies."
5
"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."
5
"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."
5
"There's something so quietly contained in the moments when one reaches their hand out to support your tragedy. It's hardly ever spoken about, but the feeling of belonging to somewhere, or someone for a split second, gives you enough power to carry on a few more steps. When the world is full of compassionate people like this, the world will know Unconditional Love."
5
"He was as incapable of imagining pain or danger to himself as he was incapable of conceiving the pain he caused others."
5
"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."
5
"You didn't get past something like that, you go through it -- and for that reason alone, I understood more about her than she ever would have guessed."
5
"Just because an impressive storm doesn't touch you, you must not find it beautiful! Lend an ear to the voices of those which are under the storm!"
5
"Neuroscience makes us connect with each other at an emotional level. It makes us make friends. It makes us dream more positively. It makes us more optimistic about ourselves and the world even in our darkest days. It makes us achieve our goal endowed with strength even through immense miseries. It allows us to attain the subjective reality of our fellow humans. Imbued with the understanding of the mind we can walk in the shoes of other people."
5
"Those who are without compassion cannot see what is seen with the eyes of compassion."
4
"Any empathic person who knows how valuable time is will think twice before wasting another person's time, because losing time is losing a part of your life."
4
"Are you comfortable? That's good. But there is somewhere at least someone is uncomfortable! And this should somehow make you uncomfortable too! The world can be a better place only through this way, through thinking others!"
4
"When someone is vicious toward you they are giving you a glimpse of the pain they carry in themselves."
4
"No one is so accursed by fate No one so utterly desolate But some heart though unknown Responds unto his own."
4
"[T]he unsympathetic assessments we make of others are usually the result of nothing more sinister than our habit of looking at them in the wrong way, through lenses clouded by distraction, exhaustion and fear, which blind us to the fact that they are really, despite a thousand differences, just altered versions of ourselves: fellow fragile, uncertain, flawed beings likewise craving love and in urgent need of forgiveness."
4
"With a book he was regardless of time..."
4
"Don't talk, just listen, and feel with all your heart."
4
"We must recognize that the suffering of one person or one nation is the suffering of humanity."
4
"I had a dream about you last night. You set a timer on in the bathroom to prove how long it takes me to get ready. So I shaved your legs, made up your face and gave you lashes. An hour later you thanked God for not making you a woman."
4
"In youth, the greatest success is to see the world from the eyes of the aged people and to feel exactly how they feel."
4
"Grover started to sniffle and I figured if I didn't cheer him up he'd either start bawling or chewing up my mattress. He tends to eat household objects whenever he gets upset."
4
"People talk and people listen, but very few care enough to help."
4
"Make a difference about something other than yourselves."
4
"We must be able to love other people or forever endure the stain of disgraceful loneliness. By recognizing and expressing empathy for other people, we come to accept our own fallibility."
4
"It is when suffering finds a voice andsets our nerves quivering that this pity comes troubling us."
4
"There's a gap somehow between empathy and activism. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke of 'soul force' - something that emanates from a deep truth inside of us and empowers us to act. Once you identify your inner genius, you will be able to take action, whether it's writing a check or digging a well."
4
"There are two types of empathy: the positive empathy and the negative empathy. When we are fully carried away by the unaware activities of the mirror neurons, we are under the trap of negative empathy. The negative empathy generates attachments. Out of these attachments suffering follows. Negative empathy is a kind of reaction to a situation, whereas positive empathy is internal response of peace love and tranquility.... In positive empathy, your deep tranquility, joy and peace activates the mirror neurons of the others, whereas in negative empathy your mirror neurons are activated by the disturbance of others."
4
"If you give pain to someone out there, you will start to feel the pain within you! Such is the science of the Vitraags [the enlightened ones]. If you take everyone's pain for one lifetime, it will make up for losses of infinite lifetimes!"
4
"If you have never walked a mile in someone's shoes, do not mock the soars on his feet."
4
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