Quotes about Empathy

Dr. Brand said, in a comment that has always stayed with me, "A healthy body attends to the pain of the weakest part.

Pain allows us, the fortunate ones at least, to lead free and active lives. If you ever doubt that, visit a leprosarium and observe for yourself a world without pain.

As Christ's body on earth we are compelled to move, as he did, toward those who hurt. That has been God's consistent movement in all history.

by embracing grief and standing beside the hurting person, we can indeed aid another's search for meaning.

the down-and-out, who flocked to Jesus when he lived on earth, no longer feel welcome among his followers. What has happened?

Perhaps the greatest way to give suffering people time is being patient with them — giving them room to doubt, cry, question and work out strong and often extreme emotions.

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.