Quotes about Empathy

Every hour or so she asks how I'm feeling, and I hear her giving reports on the phone to her friends. "He's doing better today. A little trouper, doesn't complain at all." I like hearing her talk about me, as if I matter.

Wounded people who have been broken by suffering and sickness ask for only one thing: a heart that loves and commits itself to them, a heart full of hope for them.

Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep," advised the apostle Paul (Romans 12:15), wise words that apply especially in times of crisis.

In a letter to his brother, C. S. Lewis mentioned that he prayed every night for the people he was most tempted to hate, with Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini heading the list. In another letter he wrote that as he prayed for them, he meditated on how his own cruelty might have blossomed into something like theirs. He remembered that Christ died for them as much as for him, and that he himself was not "so different from these ghastly creatures.

It makes a huge difference whether I treat a nonbeliever as someone who is wrong rather than as someone who is on the way but lost.

a suffering person needs: love, and not knowledge and wisdom.

There is almost a sensual longing for communion with others who have a large vision.

If I were your enemy, I'd use every opportunity to bring old wounds to mind, as well as the people, events, and circumstances that caused them. I'd try to ensure that your heart was hardened with anger and bitterness. Shackled through unforgiveness.

Ask the Lord to break your heart for what breaks His, and then ask Him to stir in you a sense of active compassion that makes you too uncomfortable to sit by and do nothing.

The ultimate proof of total forgiveness takes place when we sincerely petition the Father to let those who have hurt us off the hook—even if they have hurt not only us, but also those close to us.

nine out of ten people I have had to forgive sincerely do not feel they have done anything wrong. It is up to me to forgive them from my heart — and then keep quiet about it.

When speaking to or about another person, ask yourself if what you are about to say will meet their need: Necessary — Is it necessary to say this? Encourage — Will this encourage? Will it make them feel better? Edify — Will it edify? Will it build them up and make them stronger as a result of what you would say? Dignify — Will it dignify that person? That's the way Jesus treated other people; he gave them a sense of dignity. Criticism