Quotes about Empathy

A person's suffering is similar to gas. If any amount of gas is pumped into an empty chamber, it will fill it completely. No matter how big the chamber. Suffering completely fills the human soul and conscious mind whether the suffering is great or little. Therefore the 'size' of human suffering is irrelevant. - Viktor Frankl for his analogy on human suffering and gas within a chamber.

The grasping of another person in his uniqueness means loving him[.]

They went in and out of each other's minds without any effort.

It is no use trying to sum people up.

But nevertheless, the fact remained, it was almost impossible to dislike anyone if one looked at them.

For pleasure has no relish unless we share it.

Her only gift was knowing people almost by instinct, she thought, walking on. If you put her in a room with someone, up went her back like a cat's; or she purred.

One of the signs of passing youth is the birth of a sense of fellowship with other human beings as we take our place among them.

Among the tortures and devastations of life is this then—our friends are not able to finish their stories.

Coleridge certainly did not mean, when he said that a great mind is androgynous, that it is a mind that has any special sympathy with women; a mind that takes up their cause or devotes itself to their interpretation. Perhaps the androgynous mind is less apt to make these distinctions than the single-sexed mind. He meant, perhaps, that the androgynous mind is resonant and porous; that it transmits emotion without impediment; that it is naturally creative, incandescent and undivided.

When I heard you cry I followed you, and saw you put down your handkerchief, screwed up, with its rage, with its hate, knotted in it.

Have I never understood you, Katherine? Have I been very selfish?' 'Yes ... You've asked her for sympathy, and she's not sympathetic; you've wanted her to be practical, and she's not practical.