Empathy Quotes

Allowing a person or thing to leave your life, without further pain is the basis of humanity. Everything else is the reason (theology).

~ Shannon L. Alder

There is no greater intelligence than kindness and empathy.

~ Bryant Mcgill

The glory of fame isn't in having so many people know you, but in having so many people know you care. Otherwise, it's like being drawn to a fire to find no warmth.

~ Richelle E. Goodrich

Empathy comes from the Greek empatheia - em (into) and pathos (feeling) - a penetration, a kind of travel. It suggests you enter another person's pain as you'd enter another country, through immigration and customs, border crossing by way of query: What grows where you are? What are the laws? What animals graze there?

~ Leslie Jamison

Thoughts are nothing but cause and effect.

~ Vaibhav Mukim

No one has ever properly understood me, I have never fully understood anyone; and no one understands anyone else

~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Empathy is a quality today that we need more than ever. Throughout his life Jesus showed empathy and care for others on a level never seen before. From him we learn that Gods ways of service to others before obsession with self is the path he wants us to walk on and deep down we know it.

~ Tim Crawshaw

Becoming aware of the intense suffering of billions of animals, and of our own participation in that suffering, can bring up painful emotions: sorrow and grief for the animals; anger at the injustice and deception of the system; despair at the enormity of the problem; fear that trusted authorities and institutions are, in fact, untrustworthy; and guilt for having contributed to the problem. Bearing witness means choosing to suffer. Indeed, empathy is literally 'feeling with.' Choosing to suffer is particularly difficult in a culture that is addicted to comfort--a culture that teaches that pain should be avoided whenever possible and that ignorance is bliss. We can reduce our resistance to witnessing by valuing authenticity over personal pleasure, and integration over ignorance.

~ Melanie Joy

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

...that the doctor being himself a mortal man, should be diligent and tender in relieving his suffering patients, inasmuch as he himself must one day be a like sufferer.

~ Thomas Sydenham

I will chum with you, and suffer when you suffer, and laugh when you laugh. I will bite my tongue when impatient words come. I will keep saying as if it were a ritual: He is nothing but a boy -- a little boy!

~ Dale Carnegie

Sacramental listening reminds us that current suffering isn’t the end of the story. God loves us deeply, and the vision for the future is vaster and more magnificent than we could ever imagine. In these moments of profound human presence, we are awakened to the divine presence and see that the kingdom of God is coming and yet is already here.

~ Richard Rohr

God only knows the torment of the suffering soul and only he can take away the pain.

~ Timothy W. Tron

Alas! we must suffer ourselves before we can feel for others.

~ Émile Gaboriau

Never give up your right to be wrong, and be sure to give others that right too.

~ Tim Fargo

Now do you understand why I'm interested in you? You're a locked door, sweetheart. You give no one a key and you never answer the door when anyone knocks...Ah, but sometimes, sometimes I get a peek through the keyhole and what I find there...It's like glimpsing you as you're stripping. Underneath all of that darkness is something hungry, something desperate, something, oh, so deliciously vulnerable.

~ Tricia Owens

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)

~ Erik Pevernagie

There is no great reward for being emotionally withdrawn, no pity prize for bottling your frustration. No one is coming to congratulate your chronic self-repression. By opening up, maybe you will inconvenience some people. Maybe you will trigger some conflict. Maybe you will be rejected, criticized, judged. Everything comes with a price and everything has its compensation. Authenticity may require pain, but it also opens the doors to joy, creativity, self-respect, empathy. Self-repression, on the other hand, costs you all the beauty of the world in exchange for a prison of comfort. Is it really worth it? Isn't it time to break free?

~ Vironika Tugaleva

A person imbued with compassion and self-understanding can readily love oneself and exhibit endless sympathy for all people. A person who is unkind to their self can never transcend their corrupt barriers much less run into the world with open arms enthusiastically embracing humankind and all of nature with uninhibited friendliness and goodwill.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Apathy is, too often, a result of overexposure to stressful, highly emotional situations. To rekindle empathy, sometimes we need some space. It's okay to walk away so that you can feel love for someone again. Sometimes for a moment. Sometimes forever.

~ Vironika Tugaleva

It's frustrating when our best efforts to help people fail. But if we could see life through their weary eyes and experience their trials with the same frayed emotions, we might understand why.

~ Richelle E. Goodrich

A thousand pounds for clothes--when on thinks how long poor people could live on it! When one thinks how long we could live on it, for that matter!

~ Dodie Smith

Reading an author's Biography contributes to an understanding and enjoyment of their work, and gives a richness to the reading experience.

~ Suzy Davies

If you happen to hold that human consciousness is no more than the epiphenomenon, or secretion, of our individual brains then you are more or less trapped in your own skull. But if consciousness is open, if it can partake in a more global form of being, if it can merge with the natural world and with other beings, then, indeed, it may be possible to drop, for a time, the constraints of one's personal worldview and see reality through the eyes of others.

~ F. David Peat

Whenever you feel like criticizing any one...just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had.

~ F. Scott Fitzgerald

Resolve to be tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant of the weak and the wrong. Sometime in life you will have been all of these.

~ Lloyd Shearer

One reason we rush so quickly to the vulgar satisfactions of judgment, and love to revel in our righteous outrage, is that it spares us from the impotent pain of empathy, and the harder, messier work of understanding.

~ Tim Kreider

What dooms our best efforts to cultivate empathy and compassion is always, of course, other people.

~ Tim Kreider

Nothing changes until people decide to do the things they must, in order to bring about peace.

~ Shannon L. Alder

the whole point of literature, I think, is that it’s the best technology we have for communicating what another person’s life feels like from the inside.

~ Garth Greenwell

Self-awareness - the commendable ability to be yourself without being a nuisance to someone else.

~ Criss Jami

And another local journalist wrote an op-ed wondering if this trend of empathy had gone too far. Wondering if this trend of empathy had gone too far?To erase the possibility of empathy is also to erase the possibility of understanding.

~ Amanda Palmer

She seems to always get itTo have become adept at empathyAlways giving excuses for people who’ve aggrieved herTo the point it’s hard for her to hit back when necessary All because she assumes she ‘understands’Then, one day . . .She finally stands up for herselfAt that moment, she revels in the natural instinct of self-preservationShe realises all this while the power she’s been withholdingIn a transcendent moment of epiphanyIt’s all beautiful ‘causeNow, she can get back to empathy with understanding, rather, than without.

~ Ufuoma Apoki

When your view is criticized or even ridiculed on television, on radio talk show, or in a newspaper editorial, don't just react angrily. Take a moment to jot down on paper the person's main thesis and how that thesis was supported. Then do two things. First, assume the person is expressing at least some good points and try to identify them. This assumption may be false, but the search for common ground with intellectual opponents is a good habit. In the process of identifying these good points, try to argue against your own view. Second, try to state on paper exactly how you would argue against the view being expressed in an intellectually precise yet emotionally calm way.

~ J.p. Moreland

The problem with our culture is we cling to so many different truths. Yet, the truths that we cling to also depend on our point of view. Maybe, the journey to a truth that can be free of hatred, bias and injustice requires a journey of the soul to see all view points.

~ Shannon L. Alder

What we understand and love understands and loves us also.

~ Robert Walser

I am not an ornithologist—I am a bird.

~ Saul Bellow

Three-fourths of the miseries and misunderstandings in the world will disappear if we step into the shoes of our adversaries and understand their standpoint.

~ Mahatma Gandhi

The true measure of a best friend is where they are when you “make” the biggest decision of your life, not where they were during the decision process.

~ Shannon L. Alder

You cannot fully understand a person's need until you have endured the same need. As hard as you may try to predict and comprehend their situation and suffering, I guarantee you'll fall short until you've been there.

~ Richelle E. Goodrich