Quotes about Empathy

“What is this you have done?” his servants asked. “While the child was alive, you fasted and wept, but when he died, you got up and ate.”

“No,” she replied, “sending me away is worse than this great wrong you have already done to me!” But he refused to listen to her.

Then the king stood up, tore his clothes, and lay down on the ground; and all his servants stood by with their clothes torn.

“What troubles you?” the king asked her. “Indeed,” she said, “I am a widow, for my husband is dead.

When she reached the man of God at the mountain, she clung to his feet. Gehazi came over to push her away, but the man of God said, “Leave her alone, for her soul is in deep distress, and the LORD has hidden it from me and has not told me.”

Then the men who were designated by name arose, took charge of the captives, and provided from the plunder clothing for the naked. They clothed them, gave them sandals and food and drink, anointed their wounds, and put all the feeble on donkeys. So they brought them to Jericho, the City of Palms, to their brothers. Then they returned to Samaria.

When I heard these words, I sat down and wept. I mourned for days, fasting and praying before the God of heaven.

When I heard their outcry and these complaints, I became extremely angry,

For how could I bear to see the disaster that would befall my people? How could I bear to see the destruction of my kindred?”

Now when Job’s three friends—Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite—heard about all this adversity that had come upon him, each of them came from his home, and they met together to go and sympathize with Job and comfort him.

When they lifted up their eyes from afar, they could barely recognize Job. They began to weep aloud, and each man tore his robe and threw dust in the air over his head.

Then they sat on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights, but no one spoke a word to him because they saw how intense his suffering was.