Empathy Quotes

The use of imaginative fiction is to deepen your understanding of your world, and your fellow men, and your own feelings, and your destiny.

~ Ursula K. Le Guin

If you will read and listen, you will admit a multiplicity of voices and points of view, consider them with some humility, allow them gracious entrance however strident or discordant some of them may sound, then you will grow and change, and each of these voices will become a constituent part of who you become, an atom of growing being. It is literature and only literature than can do this.

~ Rick Gekoski

A narcissist with power will attempt to prove in the world only what is already in his head. He can't 'see' otherwise. For him, the 'outside world' is not beyond him and does not question or challenge him and his ideas. He is the world. Others will assent to his distorted worldview, because he is powerful, not because he is believable. If he possesses any reflection, that will be exactly what will gnaw at the narcissist with power most of all: his 'truths' are inauthentic, and he is a human being without integrity. The very narcissism and power he possesses prevent him from an ongoing relationship with the truth, which begins with self-humility and the curiosity this can create in a person.

~ Sergio Troncoso

The counsellor who never reads a novel or never opens a book of poetry is neglecting an important resource for empathic development.

~ Dave Mearns

Half the point in reading novels and seeing plays and films is to exercise the faculty of sympathy with our own kind, so often obliterated in the multifarious controls and compulsions of actual social existence.

~ Germaine Greer

Compassion can be learned through example

~ Renae A. Sauter

They say that wisdom comes from suffering. This is not true. Wisdom comes from having unconditional empathy for all mankind. Any man filled with empathy is capable of gaining valuable insights on the human condition through the suffering of others. You do not need to suffer to know suffering, but you need empathy first to identify and feel the suffering of others around you. If you do not feel love for all mankind, nor see everyone around you as a valuable human and an extension of yourself, then you will never feel real empathy. And if you do not have empathy, then you will not gain, learn and remember valuable knowledge from your experiences, or those around you, so that you one day become wise. Yet most importantly, wisdom comes from having a good memory. If you do not remember anything, or are so disconnected from basic humanism to even care to dissect lessons to be gained from every experience in your life and from those around you - using simple reason and the juggling of feelings, then wisdom will forever remain a faraway planet to you.

~ Suzy Kassem

Mental illness is not a fraternity or a social club for like minds. It is its own religion to each person that has it. Their mind is their pastor, their feelings are their scriptures and their delusions are their own bible story. To break them free, is to break their faith in signs. That is why so many feel lost.

~ Shannon L. Alder

Judgement is always based on experience and sometimes you will battle a person's history first, before commonsense will ever win the war.

~ Shannon L. Alder

The great gift of human beings is that we have the power of empathy, we can all sense a mysterious connection to each other.

~ Meryl Streep

Love is about bottomless empathy, born out of the heart’s revelation that another person is every bit as real as you are. And this is why love, as I understand it, is always specific. Trying to love all of humanity may be a worthy endeavor, but, in a funny way, it keeps the focus on the self, on the self’s own moral or spiritual well-being. Whereas, to love a specific person, and to identify with his or her struggles and joys as if they were your own, you have to surrender some of your self.

~ Jonathan Franzen

There's something in everyone only they know.

~ Ben Harper

All that we can't say is all we need to hear.

~ Ben Harper

How easy it is to invent a humanity, for anyone at all.

~ Margaret Atwood

Nothing renews my faith in humanity more than the exchange of compassion so profound that mere words cannot embrace it.

~ Tiffany Madison

Doctrines, no matter which path of human endeavor they come from, must serve the humans, not the humans serving the doctrines. “Love thy neighbor” - is a great doctrine, but more importantly, it is an unparalleled piece of magnificent human teaching – as such, whoever practices it, becomes a better human, a real human. On the other hand, there is another doctrine that says “God may purify the believers and destroy the disbelievers” – now would you, as a real conscientious human being, consider this one as a great beneficial doctrine or teaching for humanity? Far from being great, doctrines like this are the ones that compel the human society to forget its innate humanism.

~ Abhijit Naskar

In the midst of compassion, we find ourselves. We discover our true purpose.

~ Jana Elston

I felt sad.I felt cold.I felt hurt.I felt forsaken and lonely.I felt doubtful and hesitant.I felt scared and deeply worried. I felt different, unknown, and unwelcome.I felt empty and woefully neglected.I felt weak and intimidated.I felt withdrawn and shy.I felt utterly hopeless.Then you held my hand, and I felt better.

~ Richelle E. Goodrich

Algernon is so smart he has to solve a problem with a lock that changes every time he goes in to eat so he has to lern something new to get his food. That made me sad because if he coulnt lern he wouldnt be able to eat and he would be hungry.

~ Daniel Keyes

Victoria was, at the time, far more empathetic and forgiving, chiding Albert for his narrow view of humanity. 'I always think that one ought always to be indulgent towards other people, as I always think, if we had not been well brought up and well taken care of, we might also have gone astray.

~ Leslie Carroll

If you are going to judge others it is wisest to do so individually not collectively and on your own direct experience of them personally. But first - and throughout - examine yourself closely. Blurred vision can often occur due to the lens, perspective and perceptions of the viewer projected onto the object that it sees. Be wary of taking to the judges seat. Above all meet at treat yourself and everyone else mindfully, compassionately with humanity.

~ Rasheed Ogunlaru

I look around with divine precision and gazing free upon the earth, I see —— architects and earthquakes - empaths and robots - fictions and near misses - lives changing, children sleeping, beauty brimming.I see us - trying on ways of being - so sweet and messy, so worthwhile.

~ Laurie Perez

Whales feel cohesion, a sense of community, of loyalty. The distress call of a lone whale is enough to prompt its entire pod to rush to its side- a gesture that lands them nose to nose in the same sand. It's a fatal symphony of echolocation, a siren call to the sympathetic.

~ Marina Keegan

An animal in pain is the saddest thing on Earth.

~ Sanober Khan

I am not an atheist. But the religion that I do advocate is not of the Bible, Vedas, Quran or any other scripture. The religion I speak of, is what Christ talked about, it is what Buddha talked about, it is the religion of plain everyday kindness.

~ Abhijit Naskar

Forgiveness is a transformative act because it asks you to be a more empathetic and compassionate person, thereby making you better than the person you were when you were first hurt.

~ Kamand Kojouri

If you want to know how negative you are, pay attention to how much you hate negativity in other people. Fragile, artificial positivity needs always to be surrounded by more positivity in order to stay positive, but the ability to be positive, happy, and even, at times, appreciative around 'negative people' is the mark of real positivity.

~ Criss Jami

There are basically two kinds of people: those who have empathy and care about others and those who don't. The ones who don't are creating most of the problems in the world.

~ Laurence Overmire

You are a valuable instrument in the orchestration of your own world, and the overall harmony of the universe.

~ Suzy Kassem

Speaking a painful truth should be done only in love - like wielding a sword with no hilt - it should pain oneself in direct proportion to the amount of force exerted.

~ Criss Jami

Compassion hurts. When you feel connected to everything, you also feel responsible for everything. And you cannot turn away. Your destiny is bound with the destinies of others. You must either learn to carry the Universe or be crushed by it. You must grow strong enough to love the world, yet empty enough to sit down at the same table with its worst horrors.

~ Andrew Boyd

It's the hardest thing in the world to go on being aware of someone else's pain.

~ Pat Barker

Pain without cause is a pain we can't trust. We assume it's been chosen or fabricated.

~ Leslie Jamison

God whispered, You endured a lot. For that I am truly sorry, but grateful. I needed you to struggle to help so many. Through that process you would grow into who you have now become. Didn't you know that I gave all my struggles to my favorite children? One only needs to look at the struggles given to your older brother Jesus to know how important you have been to me.

~ Shannon L. Alder

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.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Affliction equips the suffering to empathize with others in anguish and not only does it strengthen them, it enables them to be consoling comforters in a world full of hurt.

~ Donna Lynn Hope

As you are all aware, in the course of life we experience many kinds of pain. Pains of the body and pains of the heart. I know I have experienced pain in many different forms, and I'm sure you have too. In most cases, though, I'm sure you've found it very difficult to convey the truth of that pain to another person: to explain it in words. People say that only they themselves can understand the pain they are feeling. But is it true? I for one do not believe that it is. If, before our eyes, we see someone who is truly suffering, we do sometimes feel his suffering and pain as our own. This is the power of empathy. Am I making myself clear?''He broke off and looked around the room once again.''The reason that people sing songs for other people is because they want to have the power to arouse empathy, to break free of the narrow shell of the self and share their pain and joy with others. This is not an easy thing to do, of course. And so tonight, as a kind of experiment, I want you to experience a simpler, more physical kind of empathy. Lights please.''Everyone in the place was hushed now, all eyes fixed on stage. Amid the silence, the man stared off into space, as if to insert a pause or to reach a state of mental concentration. Then, without a word, he held his hand over the lighted candle. Little by little, he brought the palm closer and closer to the flame. Someone in the audience made a sound like a sigh or a moan. You could see the tip of the flame burning the man's palm. You could almost hear the sizzle of the flesh. A woman let out a hard little scream. Everyone else just watched in frozen horror. The man endured the pain, his face distorted in agony. What the hell was this? Why did he have to do such a stupid, senseless thing? I felt my mouth going dry. After five or six seconds of this, he slowly removed his hand from the flame and set the dish with the candle in it on the floor. Then he clasped his hands together, the right and left palms pressed against each other.''As you have seen tonight, ladies and gentleman, pain can actually burn a person's flesh,'' said the man. His voice sounded exactly as it had earlier: quiet, steady, cool. No trace of suffering remained on his face. Indeed, it had been replaced by a faint smile. ''And the pain that must have been there, you have been able to feel as if it were your own. That is the power of empathy.

~ Haruki Murakami

As you are all aware, in the course of life we experience many kinds of pain. Pains of the body and pains of the heart. I know I have experienced pain in many different forms, and I'm sure you have too. In most cases, though, I'm sure you've found it very difficult to convey the truth of that pain to another person: to explain it in words. People say that only they themselves can understand the pain they are feeling. But is it true? I for one do not believe that it is. If, before our eyes, we see someone who is truly suffering, we do sometimes feel his suffering and pain as our own. This is the power of empathy. Am I making myself clear?''He broke off and looked around the room once again.''The reason that people sing songs for other people is because they want to have the power to arouse empathy, to break free of the narrow shell of the self and share their pain and joy with others. This is not an easy thing to do, of course. And so tonight, as kind of experiment, I want you to experience a simpler, more physical kind of empathy. Lights please.''Everyone in the place was hushed now, all eyes fixed on stage. Amid the silence, the man stared off into space, as if to insert a pause or to reach a state of mental concentration. Then, without a word, he held his hand over the lighted candle. Little by little, he brought the palm closer and closer to the flame. Someone in the audience made a sound like a sigh or a moan. You could see the tip of the flame burning the man's palm. You could almost hear the sizzle of the flesh. A woman let out a hard little scream. Everyone else just watched in frozen horror. The man endured the pain, his face distorted in agony. What the hell was this? Why did he have to do such a stupid, senseless thing? I felt my mouth going dry. After five or six seconds of this, he slowly removed his hand from the flame and set the dish with the candle in it on the floor. Then he clasped his hands together, the right and left palms pressed against each other.''As you have seen tonight, ladies and gentleman, pain can actually burn a person's flesh,'' said the man. His voice sounded exactly as it had earlier: quiet, steady, cool. No trace of suffering remained on his face. Indeed, it had been replaced by a faint smile. ''And the pain that must have been there, you have been able to feel as if it were your own. That is the power of empathy.

~ Haruki Murakami

One's suffering, one's melancholy is, in itself, really only looked upon as failure or as punishment, as detestable or sinful or socially unacceptable in the eyes of man; but this is not so in the eyes of God: for He is close to the broken-hearted.

~ Criss Jami

We are, or rather our natural desire to evade pain and to attain pleasure is, the primary reason we do or say every single thing we do or say.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana