Quotes about Empathy

You're going to get hurt yourself, and badly, if you take everything so hard.

If she could give love to IT perhaps it would shrivel up and die, for she was sure that IT could not withstand love.

We want nothing from you that you do without grace or [...] understanding.

One of the hardest lessons I have to learn is how not to be judgmental about people who are judgmental. When I see how wrong somebody is—how shallow it is to look at the Resurrection as a mere, explainable fact—when I see only the mistakenness of others, then I am blinded to their being children of God, who are just as valued and treasured as are those who more nearly agree with me.

The refusal to love is the only unbearable thing.

Love isn't what you feel. It's what you do.

If you're going to care about the fall of the sparrow you can't pick and choose who's going to be the sparrow. It's everybody, and you're stuck with it.

He said, "There's a sermon of John Donne's I have often had cause to remember during my lifetime. He says, Other men's crosses are not my crosses. We all have our own cross to carry, and one is all most of us are able to bear. How much do you owe him, Vicky?

To love anyone is to hope in him always. From the moment at which we begin to judge anyone, to limit our confidence in him, from the moment at which we identify [pigeonhole] him, and so reduce him to that, we cease to love him, and he ceases to be able to become better. We must dare to love in a world that does not know how to love.

Detachment and involvement: the artist must have both. The link between them is compassion.

Compassion means to suffer with, but it doesn't mean to get lost in the suffering, so that it becomes exclusively one's own. I tend to do this, to replace the person for whom I am feeling compassion with myself.

I suppose that depends on how you look at it," Meg said. "Usually no matter what happens people think it's my fault, even if I have nothing to do with it at all. But I'm sorry I tried to fight him. It's just been an awful week. And I'm full of bad feeling.