Empathy Quotes

“People die from lack of shared empathy and affinity. By establishing social connectedness, we give hope a chance and the other can become heaven. ( "Le ciel c'est l'autre" )”
― Erik Pevernagie

“History is not just facts and events. History is also a pain in the heart and we repeat history until we are able to make another's pain in the heart our own.”
― Julius Lester

“Most of us tend to belittle all suffering except our own," said Mary. "I think it's fear. We don't want to come too near in case we're sucked in and have to share it.”
― Elizabeth Goudge, The Scent of Water

“Loss of empathy might well be the most enduring and deep-cutting scar of all, the silent blade of an unseen enemy, tearing at our hearts and stealing more than our strength. Stealing our will, for what are we without empathy? What manner of joy might we find in our live if we cannot understand the joys and pains of those around us, if we cannot share in a greater community.”
― r.a. salvatore, The Silent Blade

“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.”
― Bryant McGill, Voice of Reason

“Being able to express shallow words of sympathy in a sweet voice doesn't make someone a caring, compassionate soul. What's important is the ability to have empathy for another human being--to be able to feel their pain, to walk alongside them in their suffering.”
― Sōsuke Natsukawa, The Cat Who Saved Books

“...to make art is to realize another's sadness within, realize the hidden sadness in other people's lives, to feel sad with and for a stranger.”
― Marianne Wiggins, The Shadow Catcher

“For you see, when us people who know run into each other that's an event. It almost never happens. Sometimes we meet each other and neither guesses that the other is one who knows. That's a bad thing. It's happened to me a lot of times. But you see there are so few of us.”
― Carson McCullers, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

“Holden went to his bungalow and began to understand that he was not alone in the world, and also that he was afraid for the sake of another, -- which is the most soul-satisfying fear known to man.”
― Rudyard Kipling, Selected Stories

“The emotional states are liberated inside water, we calm down emotionally, we become more sensitive, we are able to "touch" deeper ourselves and other beings. Empathy is echoing back to us giving subtle vibrations from the realm of the senses. Find your water ~”
― Grigoris Deoudis

“By revealing to Tomas her dream about jabbing needles under her fingernails, Tereza unwittingly revealed that she had gone through his desk. If Tereza had been any other woman, Tomas would never have spoken to her again. Aware of that, Tereza said to him, Throw me out! But instead of throwing her out, he seized her hand and kissed the tips of her fingers, because at that moment he himself felt the pain under her fingernails as surely as if the nerves of her fingers led straight to his own brain.

Anyone who has failed to benefit from the Devil’s gift of compassion (co-feeling) will condemn Tereza coldly for her deed, because privacy is sacred and drawers containing intimate correspondence are not to be opened. But because compassion was Tomas’s fate (or curse), he felt that he himself had knelt before the open desk drawer, unable to tear his eyes from Sabina’s letter. He understood Tereza, and not only was he incapable of being angry with her, he loved her all the more.”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“All men are born firstly with the instinct to protect themselves. But few grow to really love themselves, and even fewer learn to love their neighbor as themselves.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“I know you want me to feel some sympathy for them, but that's not who I am. I care only about those I know, and even then, not all that deeply. Strangers get nothing from me.”
― Rachel Caine, Lord of Misrule

“As a kid my heart would break for the villains.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“I think that a lot of the time, people are generous towards those whom they pity; but only find fault in those whom they see as better than themselves. There is a fake kind of goodness; and that is the goodness that is only good towards other people that make the givers feel better about themselves. Would you be good to someone you think is so much better than you are? Or who has so much more than you have? Or is your goodness only reserved for those who make you feel like a god because you give to them? Too often, there are shining, beautiful people, who suffer so much in this world, because there would be so many others willing to snuff out their flames! Goodness of a person is not measured by sympathy or compassion; rather, goodness is measured by empathy. Empathy goes beyond all the physical things you see with your two eyes. It’s easy to be good to those you pity; much harder to be good to those whom you envy!”
― C. JoyBell C.

“The moderns, carrying little baggage of the kind that Shelly called "merely cultural," not even living in the traditional air, but breathing into their space helmets a scientific mixture of synthetic gases (and polluted at that) are the true pioneers. Their circuitry seems to include no atavistic domestic sentiment, they have suffered empathectomy, their computers hum no ghostly feedback of Home, Sweet Home. How marvelously free they are! How unutterably deprived!”
― Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose

“For those constantly full of joy, they sometimes feel a little guilty for always feeling so good. That guilt is compassion: it flies in with an attempt to share one's joy with others who do not have it.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“Think about it. We all have our bits of madness. Don't be too harsh about the madness of others.”
― Osamu Tezuka, Buddha, Vol. 7: Prince Ajatasattu

“When in Reading Gaol he told me that the warders in the dock had been gentle and kind, but the visit of the chaplain in his first prison began with these words:

'Mr. Wilde, did you have morning prayers in your house?'

'I am sorry... I fear not.'

'You see where you are now!”
― Charles Ricketts, Recollections of Oscar Wilde

“One of the benefits of aligning yourself with an indistinct cluster of people is that claiming to feel their pain is often enough.”
― Charlie Brooker

“We are out sisters' keepers.”
― Eileen Granfors, Flash Warden and Other Stories

“попробуй выучиться одному нехитрому фокусу, Глазастик, - сказал он. - Тогда тебе куда легче будет ладить с самыми разными людьми. Нельзя по-настоящему понять человека, пока не станешь на его точку зрения...
- Это как?
- Надо влезть в его шкуру и походить в ней.
(Аттикус Финч - Глазастику Финч)”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“Be yourself one hundred and one thousand percent. Everybody man, from the sides to the back to the middle to the sides, you might not even know people, but if you rock with Lil B music and respect me from the core, you should know that based means you have someone you can trust, because we all have a common courtesy. It’s about having empathy now. What I mean is really caring and paying attention to somebody else’s feeling. You gotta have empathy and know we all on this common vibe. It’s all peace. It’s saying, hey, you know what, you can hit me and I’m not hitting you back. And that takes a very big person to do that.”
― Brandon McCartney

“Opportunities to share love and compassion are all around us. Its going to take an army of compassionate people to heal our world. How will you show yours?”
― Renae A. Sauter, An Empowered Life: Mind/Body/Spirit Empowerment

“You're so cynical," Tiny says, waving his hand at me.
"I'm not cynical, Tiny," I answer. "I'm practical."
"You're a robot," he says. Tiny thinks that I am incapable of what humans call emotion because I have not cried since my seventh birthday, when I saw the movie All Dogs Go to Heaven. I suppose I should have known from the title that it wouldn't end merrily, but in my defense, I was seven. Anyway, I haven't cried since then. I don't really understand the point of crying. Also, I feel that crying is almost--like, aside from deaths of relatives or whatever-- totally avoidable if you follow two very simple rules: 1. Don't care too much. 2. Shut up. Everything unfortunate that has ever happened to me has stemmed from failure to follow one of the rules.”
― John Green, Will Grayson, Will Grayson

“A narrow-minded man can lead one to devalue others, and in the end, to desperately dangerous hates of outsiders, ranging in expression from discrimination against minorities to world conflagrations,' Tolman wrote. The solution? Create broader cognitive maps in the mind that encompass bigger geographical boundaries and a wider social scope, embracing those we might consider others, and in this way encourage empathy and understanding.”
― Jennifer Ackerman, The Genius of Birds

“The main tenet of design thinking is empathy for the people you're trying to design for. Leadership is exactly the same thing - building empathy for the people that you're entrusted to help.”
― David Kelley

“Is this what comes at the end, I wondered?
Maybe death is the great equaliser, the one big thing that can finally make strangers shed a tear for one another.”
― Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie

“Orang yang merasa dirinya paling benar dan paling penting, tidak akan pernah bisa berempati terhadap orang lain.

Yang akan dilakukannya adalah justru mengambil hak orang lain.”
― Sylvia L'Namira

“There’s nothing like emotional bondage to create the conditions for Ruinous Empathy.”
― Kim Malone Scott, Radical Candor: Be a Kickass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity