Positivity can be a negative,” I tell her, “if it’s used to diminish events that should be cause for concern. Saying ‘bad things happen to good people’ or “God doesn’t give anyone more than they...

The only time you look in your neighbor’s bowl is to make sure that they have enough. You don’t look in your neighbor’s bowl to see if you have as much as them.

Empathy means realizing no trauma has discrete edges. Trauma bleeds.

They feel taken advantage of by the city. I have some empathy for that.

Why must you know the details of my troubles to have compassion? Is it not enough to show compassion simply because you know that everyone has troubles?

To embrace suffering culminates in greater empathy, the capacity to feel what it is like for the other to suffer, which is the ground for unsentimental compassion and love. (157)

Empathy, evidently, existed only within the human community, whereas intelligence to some degree could be found throughout every phylum and order including the arachnida. For one thing, the empathic faculty probably required an unimpaired group...

A writer is like a tuning fork: We respond when we’re struck by something. The thing is to pay attention, to be ready for radical empathy. If we empty ourselves of ourselves we’ll be able...

There’s something in everyone only they know.

I wanted simultaneously to understand Hanna’s crime and to condemn it. But it was too terrible for that. When I tried to understand it, I had the feeling I was failing to condemn it as...

Surprisingly, it is often when wandering through the emotional carnage left by the worst of humankind that we find the best of humanity ad well.

Those who really can receive bread from a stranger and smile in gratitude, can feed many without even realizing it. Those who can sit in silence with their fellow man not knowing what to say...

The main condition for the achievement of love is the overcoming of one’s narcissism. The narcissistic orientation is one in which one experiences as real only that which exists within oneself, while the phenomena in...

Fiction challenges us and works its miracles by placing us in the skin of another human being and teaching us empathy.

By revealing to Tomas her dream about jabbing needles under her fingernails, Tereza unwittingly revealed that she had gone through his desk. If Tereza had been any other woman, Tomas would never have spoken to...

To be good, is to be like God. Our purpose in life is to try and reach that standard. We will always fall short, but in our lifetime if we try our best to make...

As we tell stories about the lives of others, we learn how to imagine what another creature might feel in response to various events. At the same time, we identify with the other creature and...

To be exploited fundamentally means to be confused. When you’re not confused you can’t be exploited because you have clarity about the situation. To confuse people you must provide contradictory information. People who really want...

[The answer of Solon to the question ‘Which is the most perfect popular government?’]That where the least injury done to the meanest individual, is considered as an insult on the whole constitution.

This is where the will to grapple with our hard and pressing environmental problems begins: in relationship to something other that you love beyond any utility, beyond any logic.

In pursuit of exposing people for who we think they are, we expose ourself.

My other boy thing is that I sort of have a teeny tiny superpower. It’s not a jump-over-buildings, see-through-people’s-clothes, or lift-a-train-over-my-head one, which is good, because when you can do those kinds of things you...

To perceive is to suffer.

People said things to me like “They’re just animals. They’re here for our use.” I had a visceral reaction to that phrase, maybe because I was told countless times during my growing-up years that I...

Treat people like people. Beware of pity and patronization because in them, you can’t see when you’re unashamedly looking down on someone.

I had a dream about you. You were guarding a bridge that I needed to cross. You asked if I had the proper paperwork, and I said I did, but I was just missing one...

The emotional states are liberated inside water, we calm down emotionally, we become more sensitive, we are able to “touch” deeper ourselves and other beings. Empathy is echoing back to us giving subtle vibrations from...

We weep for the blood of a bird, but not for the blood of a fish. Blessed are those who have voice.

Pain without cause is a pain we can’t trust. We assume it’s been chosen or fabricated.

…Because a book is a little empathy machine. It puts you inside somebody else’s head. You see out of the world through somebody else’s eyes. It’s very hard to hate people of a certain kind...

I stumble and fall.I weep and struggle to rise.My mom feels it all.

Do you know what it is?’ [Toby] said thoughtfully. ‘It’s that they haven’t had anything really awful happen to them. No wonder they seem so superficial and unfeeling.’ It was certainly an interesting theory, …...

King and Gandhi had found a way to use aggressive impulses to resist injustice without hurting others. Where did the aggression go? The answer, as King would later tell Poussaint, was this: into the courage...

In my judgment, the woman is the equal of the man. She has all the rights I have and one more, and that is the right to be protected. That is my doctrine. You are...

Empathy is the stepping stone to respect

When a good man is hurt all who would be called good must suffer with him.

Those who cannot perceive are no better than those who cannot see…Those who cannot empathize are no better than those who cannot perceive…

Motivation is my problem: I’m almost too motivated. I lie awake thinking how Kris would dress for the occasion or why Benjamin would be upset in the field or how the hell Brianna will manage...

If bullies actually believe that somebody loves them and believes in them, they will love themselves, they will become better people, and many will even become saviors to the bullied.

I think if God came down and gave us all His version of Empathy then all the world’s problems would surely become a thing of the past.

No matter what the situation may be, I still take pleasure in witnessing the joy of others.

Call the world, if you please, “the Vale of Soul Making”. Then you will find out the use of the world….There may be intelligences or sparks of the divinity in millions — but they are...

Empathy isn’t just listening, it’s asking the questions whose answers need to be listened to. Empathy requires inquiry as much as imagination. Empathy requires knowing you know nothing. Empathy means acknowledging a horizon of context...

You can unlock spiritual things only from within.

If only this great concern we have for our own sensitive feelings expanded to encompass the feelings of our fellow men.

Everyone breathing is broken. Keep breathing light into them until the stained glass collage takes your breath away.

The imagination is truly the enemy of bigotry and dogma.

GLOUCESTERNow, good sir, what are you?EDGARA most poor man made tame to fortune’s blows,Who by the art of known and feeling sorrowsAm pregnant to good pity.