Quotes about Empathy

I will chum with you, and suffer when you suffer, and laugh when you laugh. I will bite my tongue when impatient words come. I will keep saying as if it were a ritual: He is nothing but a boy -- a little boy!

Hurting a man in his dignity is a crime.

I judge people by their own principles — not by my own.

Always make the other person feel important. John Dewey, as we have already noted, said that the desire to be important is the deepest urge in human nature;

If we want to make friends, let's put ourselves out to do things for other people — things that require time, energy, unselfishness and thoughtfulness.

Praise is like sunlight to the warm human spirit; we cannot flower and grow without it. And yet, while most of us are only too ready to apply to others the cold wind of criticism, we are somehow reluctant to give our fellow the warm sunshine of praise."*

Be sympathetic with the other person's ideas and desires.

If a man's heart is rankling with discord and ill feeling toward you, you can't win him to your way of thinking with all the logic in Christendom. Scolding parents and domineering bosses and husbands and nagging wives ought to realize that people don't want to change their minds. They can't be forced or driven to agree with you or me. But they may possibly be led to, if we are gentle and friendly, ever so gentle and ever so friendly.

Remember what Lincoln said: 'A drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall.

PRINCIPLE 8 Try honestly to see things from the other person's point of view. PRINCIPLE 9 Be sympathetic with the other person's ideas and desires. PRINCIPLE 10 Appeal to the nobler motives. PRINCIPLE 11 Dramatize your ideas. PRINCIPLE 12 Throw down a challenge.

We nourish the bodies of our children and friends and employees, but how seldom do we nourish their self-esteem? We provide them with roast beef and potatoes to build energy, but we neglect to give them kind words of appreciation that would sing in their memories for years like the music of the morning stars.

PRINCIPLE 1 Don't criticize, condemn or complain. PRINCIPLE 2 Give honest and sincere appreciation. PRINCIPLE 3 Arouse in the other person an eager want.