Three-fourths of the miseries and misunderstandings in the world will disappear if we step into the shoes of our adversaries and understand their standpoint.

Empathy is about finding echoes of another person in yourself.

I’m a citizen of the republic of empathy.

[…] art instills the fundamental moral lesson: That you aren’t the center of the universe. That others weren’t created for your benefit. That they are just as real as you, with equal claimes to dignity...

When your own life is threatened, your sense of empathy is blunted by a terrible, selfish hunger for survival.

Nothing changes until people decide to do the things they must, in order to bring about peace.

The solution to nearly every problem in the world comes down to greater awareness, compassion, and empathy.

If we can share our story with someone who responds with empathy and understanding, shame can’t survive.

We all of us need to be toppled off the throne of self, my dear,” he said. “Perched up there the tears of others are never upon our own cheek.

To help others, will be rewarded

The environment is not an “other” to us. It is not a collection of things that we encounter. Rather, it is part of our being. It is the locus of our existence and identity. We...

He came up straight to her father, whose hands he took and wrung without a word – holding them in his for a minute or two, during which time his face, his eyes, his look,...

yes, I have feelingsand no, I’m not afraid of themnot even the shadowy onesthat you’d rather ignorei gather them inwelcome them homegive them space to breatheand light them on glorious firejust to seewhat might be...

Am I sitting here now, months later, in Los Angeles, writing all this down, because I want my life to matter? Maybe so. But I don’t want it to matter more than others. I want...

Successful hunting, it could be said, is an act of terminal empathy: the kill depends on how successfully a hunter inserts himself into the umwelt of his prey–even to the point of disguising himself as...

It’s the hardest thing in the world to go on being aware of someone else’s pain.

When we see others cry it is difficult, not because of feeling their pain, but your own.

The rest of y’all are lost because you don’t have a personal relationship with God—our God.” But art engages you in the world, not just the world around you but the big world, and not...

When you see a person acting violently, ask yourself whether he knows how powerful he is. If he knew his power, would he feel the need to assert it?

see” your heart and rejoice with you.

I always think that if you look at anyone in detail, you will have empathy for them because you recognize them as a human being, no matter what they’ve done.

If the road is not patchy, rough and on a hilly terrain, then the journey is not often worth undertaking as all destinations are already enough crowded

One doesn’t have to operate with great malice to do great harm. The absence of empathy and understanding are sufficient. In fact, a man convinced of his virtue even in the midst of his vice...

When the positive revolution takes hold it will no longer be enough for politicians to gain points through attack or being negative. Politicians will be expected to be constructive.

If you don’t love yourself, it makes you incapable of knowing how to love another person.

I had a dream about you. It was just you and me at the table, and there were two pieces of apple pie available. You thought it worked out perfectly, but I thought it was...

Traveling on, the shaft of his light reached now a great, dully shining oblong, and he stopped, surprised. Then, through the glass sides, he saw bright shapes of fish wheel in schools down the opaque...

How often have our own tears blinded us to the tears of others.

I needed people to deliver my feelings back to me in a form that was legible. Which is a superlative kind of empathy to seek, or to supply: an empathy that rearticulates more clearly what...

How easy it is to invent a humanity, for anyone at all.

There are so many men, all endlessly attempting to sweep me off my feet. And there is one of you, trying just the opposite. Making sure my feet are firm beneath me, lest I fall.

If you look into someone’s face long enough, eventually you’re going to feel that you’re looking at yourself.

The use of imaginative fiction is to deepen your understanding of your world, and your fellow men, and your own feelings, and your destiny.

Blessed are those with cracks in their broken heart because that is how the light gets in.

When someone is being particularly mean and nasty, I simply think to myself, he or she used to be a cute little baby, I wonder what happened?

Liberty does not mean freedom to do anything;but freedom to do right thing.

The more love you put off to the world in all aspects, the more it will return to you.

She put others before herself and yet you hate her. What did she do to you?

No one can hurt you without teaching a life’s lesson. So accept it with love and kindness.

Are you proud of yourself tonight that you have insulted a total stranger whose circumstances you know nothing about?

The agony of the empath is feeling their pain but being unable to save them from it.

There is no small act of kindness.Every compassionate act makes large the world.

I think we all have empathy. We may not have enough courage to display it.

Now, with regard to the people who have done things we call “terrorism,” I’m confident they have been expressing their pain in many different ways for thirty years or more. Instead of our empathically receiving...

There is no key to open the heart of another – except curiosity.

What people don’t understand about depression is how much it hurts. It’s like your brain is convinced that it’s dying and produces an acid that eats away at you from the inside, until all that’s...

I know you want me to feel some sympathy for them, but that’s not who I am. I care only about those I know, and even then, not all that deeply. Strangers get nothing from...

Never sever ties with a family member you once loved. Each of you might be on different spiritual paths, but both trails are leading you home.

[A] great novel will allow you to transcend the social, racial and political limitations imposed by the vicissitudes of life and to find a deep fraternity based on empathy.

Hearing has consequences. When I truly hear a person and the meanings that are important to him at that moment, hearing not simply his words, but him, and when I let him know that I...