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Empathy Quotes


"The world needs them - the ones who absorb the emotions of others, which diminishes their pain and disquietude and the world also uses them as a repository for confessions, secrets, grudges and indignation. They will leave these uncommon and intuitive individuals feeling unburdened themselves while the unusual individual will be weighed down by having taken on those burdens in addition to their own. The world needs them but what they need is something as aberrant as themselves, and that is silence, stillness and rest."


"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."


"Empathize with others. You may easily get into a situation where you need the understanding of others."


"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?"


"An empath is capable of taking on the grief of another in order to lessen their suffering. In order to not be consumed with pain, an empath should have an outlet for that pain lest they lose themselves in feeling for others."


"If Erik existed and lived life in despair,We wish him to know we are here and we care."


"When you see someone smile, does it naturally make you want to smile back? When you are irritable, do you find that people mirror your irritability? When someone yawns around you, do automatically do the same? When you hear someone celebrating, do you feel inclined to join in and celebrate too? Your responses are not forced, but instinctual and empathetic."


"How far you go in life and in your career is dependent on how far you can think good thoughts!"


"Empathy is the ability to step outside of your own bubble and into the bubbles of other people. Empathy is the ability that allows us to be useful creatures on this planet; without empathy, we are a waste of oxygen in this world. Without empathy, we are lower than animals. Empathy is the ability that allows us the perception of things around us, outside of ourselves; so a person without empathy is a limited human being, someone who will only live half of a life."


"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."


"Your heightened awareness of their perceptions, experiences, emotions, and personality styles can reveal why they feel the way they do so that you can choose your responses wisely and compassionately."


"Appreciate youthfulness and empathize with elderly people."


"[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."


"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."


"With a book he was regardless of time..."


"The poor, the illiterate, the helpless, the distressed - let these be your God."



"Relatedness is vital in a time when so many people suffer from social deafness. Emotional insensitivity being caused by a redoubtable "tin ear makes it impossible to hear any signs of empathy or capture the vibrant qualities of 'sharing'. ['Only needed a light ']"



"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."


"I think that many people do not know what empathy is. They think empathy is understanding their own selves and then connecting with like-minded individuals, who of course will understand them since they all share the same ideas. Empathy has nothing to do with likemindedness; it has to do with being able to feel the things that others feel, even when you do not share the same ideas, life story, or absolutely nothing at all! When I hear someone say, "I don't understand you, that makes me feel sorry for them. I can even understand a rock, and they can't understand me? My pet rocks have more empathy than they do."


"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."


"We are born with the innate capacity to express empathy. Experiencing our own cuts and bruises, encountering our own difficulties and disappointments, expands our cognitive world and rouses the universal desire to understand and comfort other people in pain."


"We must recognize that the suffering of one person or one nation is the suffering of humanity."


"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."


"Compassion brings people together."



"We make ourselves large or small, here or there, in our empathies."


"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."


"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."


"When you visualized a man or woman carefully, you could always begin to feel pity " that was a quality God's image carried with it. When you saw the lines at the corners of the eyes, the shape of the mouth, how the hair grew, it was impossible to hate. Hate was just a failure of imagination."


"He was as incapable of imagining pain or danger to himself as he was incapable of conceiving the pain he caused others."


"Before complaining about your burden of life, you must first try to see what other people's burden of life is!"



"When we are looking for the unexpected, we are not only looking for the unexpected in ourselves, but we are also curious about the unexpected in the behavior of the others. So as to know the others, we have got to learn how and where they differ from us. By understanding this, we are able to establish an uplifting link with otherness. ['Looking for the unexpected']"


"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."


"They are the humans, who are uniquely adorned with the priceless characteristic of empathizing. They are the humans who shed tears full of purity and piety, when they see even a complete stranger in pain and misery. They are the humans who come together to save a kid in the neighborhood when he is trapped under the wreckage of his fallen home, regardless of caste, creed and religion."


"Why must you know the details of my troubles to have compassion? Is it not enough to show compassion simply because you know that everyone has troubles?"


"The sympathy which is reverent with what it cannot understand is worth its weight in gold."


"Compassion is a muscle that gets stronger with use."


"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."


"There are some great positive quotes out there that I can't quite share as I wonder how a victim in a war torn country could be expected to see from their perspective?"


"Some people are highly empathic, some people are telempathic, or telepathic, some are clairempathic, while others are claircognizant, clairvoyant, clairaliant, clairaudient, clairgustant, clairsentient; and a very few are all of the above. The great amount of confusion and inner strife that accompanies one or more of these conditions, can be calmed and soothed first by acceptance, second by the humility to be okay with the fact that you are stuck with it forever, and third by honing these conditions to their best possible uses and most polished states."
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