•People deserve a break. The stressed and unorganized person who doesn’t have the same priorities as you may be dealing with an autistic child, abusive spouse, fading parents, or cancer. Don’t judge people until you’ve...

Life is always going to be a series of ouch-making moments, and the question was, was I going to go all fetal position, or was I going to woman up? I went into fetal position...

Try to get inside the world of Homer and see what it would be like to think with his view of reality. Only then can you begin to judge it, because only then do you...

When my sister was released from the mental hospital, she came to live with me in the tilting and crumbling one-bedroom house I’d bought with the small amount of money I inherited when our parents...

I’m too intense. I feel too much. And when I experience certain sensations, I act. Even if the situation is one I should probably walk away from. But you know what?” She was feeling a...

Because of the value placed on individual materialistic success in our society, we are surrounded by people primarily interested in getting something from others. Their attitudes are characterised by selfishness and a lack of empathy...

Mostly we tell the story of our lives, or mostly we’re taught to tell it, as a quest to avoid suffering, though if your goal is a search for meaning, honor, experience, the same events...

God always brings someone into your life that has traveled the same path and knows the rocks you climbed to get to the end of the trail.

(In part, quoting Robert Keegan from Harvard):’When we take the risk of really witnessing another human being, when we validate their human experience, we risk becoming recruited to their welfare.’ I allow my empathy to...

You see, it’s about empathy. It’s not about you. It’s about empathy. It’s not even about caring or being kind. It’s about empathy. Do you think that all people who can empathize with other people...

I’m so sorry,” he said, because after Pamela died, he promised himself that if anyone told him the smallest, saddest story, he would answer, I’m so sorry. Meaning, Yes, that happened. You couldn’t believe the...

Be willing to give, but only when you aren’t expecting anything in return.

Vielleicht wird unser Vorurteil auch dadurch bestärkt, daß es – von außen gesehen – oft vom Leben Begünstigte zu sein scheinen, […] denen wir daher sozusagen das Recht nicht zusprechen wollen, daß sie erkrankten; kennt...

It’s not so much the journey that’s important; as is the way that we treat those we encounter and those around us, along the way

But why must the system go to such lengths to block our empathy? Why all the psychological acrobatics? The answer is simple: because we care about animals, and we don’t want them to suffer. And...

Empathy comes from the Greek empatheia – em (into) and pathos (feeling) – a penetration, a kind of travel. It suggests you enter another person’s pain as you’d enter another country, through immigration and customs,...

You can’t love someone without imaginative sympathy, without beginning to see the world from another point of view. You can’t be a good lover, a good artist or a good politician without this capacity (you...

Sometimes all you can do is hug a friend tightly and wish that their pain could be transferred by touch to your own emotional hard drive.

The moderns, carrying little baggage of the kind that Shelly called “merely cultural,” not even living in the traditional air, but breathing into their space helmets a scientific mixture of synthetic gases (and polluted at...

These relationships can last for years if there’s a sense of empathy on the broker’s part, … Clients leave a broker because of interaction that makes them feel terrible.

After every storm, there is a rainbow. If you have eyes, you will find it. If you have wisdom, you will create it. If you have love for yourself and others, you won’t need it.

God only knows the torment of the suffering soul and only he can take away the pain.

Recently I interviewed a psychopath. This is always a humbling experience because it teaches over and over how much of human motivation and experience is outside my narrow range. Despite the psychopath’s lack of conscience...

Be yourself one hundred and one thousand percent. Everybody man, from the sides to the back to the middle to the sides, you might not even know people, but if you rock with Lil B...

You have to see everyone in relationship to you. Just because you understand the shit in someone else’s life doesn’t mean you don’t stand up for your own

Don’t hate the bullies. Experience tells me that hating them, or being angry with them, will always make it worse. Instead, put your arm around them. Love them. Tell them that they are valuable. Tell...

A compassionate government does not need to pay too much attention to those who don’t have needs. True leadership is to fulfill a need of the needy. People who have needs need attention indeed! Be...

Were these boys in their right minds? Here were two boys with good intellect, one eighteen and one nineteen. They had all the prospects that life could hold out for any of the young; one...

In this world where too many are willing to see only the light that is visible, never the Light Invisible, we have a daily darkness that is night, and we encounter another darkness from time...

I think the act of reading imbues the reader with a sensitivity toward the outside world that people who don’t read can sometimes lack. I know it seems like a contradiction in terms; after all...

Everyone carries a burden. Only the weight differs.

Sacramental listening reminds us that current suffering isn’t the end of the story. God loves us deeply, and the vision for the future is vaster and more magnificent than we could ever imagine. In these...

I could really use someone else’s smile today.

Senators came to realize that he understood not only their bills but the reasons they had introduced them;

If literature does one thing, it makes you more empathetic by making you live other lives and feel the pain of others. Ideologues don’t feel the pain of others because they haven’t imaginatively got under...

somebody” that will remove the obstacles they encountered out of the pathway for others.

When someone is suffering, there is a deep, visceral reaction in the core of our being, a flood of empathy and a frightfully desperate compulsion to give aid.

I think that a lot of the time, people are generous towards those whom they pity; but only find fault in those whom they see as better than themselves. There is a fake kind of...

One-time rival and subsequent usurper Secretary of State Seward finally settled into an assessment of Lincoln that, “His confidence and compassion increase every day.

Those who choose not to empathise enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy.

Humans have long since possessed the tools for crafting a better world. Where love, compassion, altruism and justice have failed, genetic manipulation will not succeed.

Close both eyes see with the other one. Then we are no longer saddled by the burden of our persistent judgments our ceaseless withholding our constant exclusion. Our sphere has widened and we find ourselves...

We who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface hidden tension that is already alive

Romantic waves beat deep in my chest of playful untouchable thoughts of you… As dreams are the threads I weave with care the path for you to me…the sky above lagoon with lovely lights, soft...

If it is not tempered by compassion, and empathy, reason can lead men and women into a moral void. (95)

Holden went to his bungalow and began to understand that he was not alone in the world, and also that he was afraid for the sake of another, — which is the most soul-satisfying fear...

Maybe your empathy’s just a comforting lie, you ever think of that? Maybe you think you know how the other person feels but you’re only feeling yourself, maybe you’re even worst than me. Or maybe...

To us post-moderns, empathy is a stranger in a strange land”. ~R. Alan Woods [2012]

None of us can choose where we shall love…

You need to forgive people you don’t understand; if not, try to understand people you want to forgive.