Quotes about Empathy

If we had lost our own chief good, other people's good would remain, and that is worth trying for.

Love seeketh not itself to please, Nor for itself hath any care But for another gives its ease And builds a heaven in hell's despair Love seeketh only self to please, To bind another to its delight, Joys in another's loss of ease, And builds a hell in heaven's despite." —W. Blake: Songs of Experience

Throughout their friendship Deronda had been used to Hans' egotism, but he had never before felt intolerant of it: when Hans, habitually pouring out his own feelings and affairs, had never cared for any detail in return, and, if he chanced to know any, had soon forgotten it

Where women love each other, men learn to smother their mutual dislike.

I believe that people are almost always better than their neighbors think they are," said Dorothea.

Indeed we are most of us brought up in the notion that the highest motive for not doing a wrong is something irrespective of the beings who would suffer the wrong.

No, dear, no, said Dorothea, stroking her sister's cheek. Souls have complexions too: what will suit one will not suit another.

What do we live for, if not to make life less difficult for each other?

is so painful in you, Celia, that you will look at human beings as if they were merely animals with a toilet, and never see the great soul in a man's face.

I suppose one reason why we are seldom able to comfort our neighbours with our words is that our goodwill gets adulterated, in spite of ourselves, before it can pass our lips. We can send black pudding and pettitoes without giving them a flavour of our own egoism; but language is a stream that is almost sure to smack of a mingled soil.

What do we live for, if not to make the world less difficult for each other?

People who live at a distance are naturally less faulty than those immediately under our own eyes;