quotations about empathy
There is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one's own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels with someone, for someone, a pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echoes.
MILAN KUNDERA
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Without exception, empathy is always appropriate.
STEPHEN R. COVEY
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Families
Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could all be a little more gentle with each other, and a little more loving, have a little more empathy, and maybe we'd like each other a little bit more.
JUDY GARLAND
attributed, Little Girl Lost
The price of empathy is the self--to be more precise, the belief in one's own self.
FRITZ BREITHAUPT
The Dark Sides of Empathy
Empathy is akin to sympathy, but whereas sympathy says, "I feel as you do," empathy says, "I know how you feel." In other words, empathy enables us to use our heads more than our hearts, and allows us to appreciate another person's feelings without becoming emotionally involved with him.
R. W. ARMSTRONG
Reader's Digest, 1955
You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was Dostoevsky and Dickens who taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who ever had been alive. Only if we face these open wounds in ourselves can we understand them in other people.
JAMES BALDWIN
Life Magazine, May 24, 1963
The great gift of human beings is that we have the power of empathy, we can all sense a mysterious connection to each other.
MERYL STREEP
attributed, Job Readiness for Health Professionals
Much of the insensibility and hardness of the world is due to the lack of imagination which prevents a realization of the experiences of other people.
JANE ADDAMS
Democracy and Social Ethics
I feel sympathy
Empathy
It's just that I'm super busy right now
Really
NELLIE MCKAY
"Really", Get Away from Me
Empathy is the crucible of intercultural relations.
CAROLYN CALLOWAY-THOMAS
Empathy in the Global World
We need empathy
(do you believe me)
We need empathy
(time to retrieve it)
We need empathy
(I really want it)
Give me anything
However small!
ANYTHING BOX
"45", Elektrodelica
Empathy is the creation of holograms of a view of the other's whole from a small portion of their speech and non-verbal expression. The consequence is that the view of any self is inter-twined with the view of others in such a way that even the tiniest hints and mentions of what others experience, for the most part, make instantaneous sense for listeners. When listening carefully, and attending closely to how people speak, what is understood is far in excess of the manner of speech and the logical content of what is said. Empathy is being momentarily and subtly transported out of oneself--and into the perspective, self-experiences and view of the world of others.
IAN RORY OWEN
Talk
In the currency of friendship, empathy is more valuable than accuracy.
ERICA BAUERMEISTER
Joy For Beginners
Loss of empathy might well be the most enduring and deep-cutting scar of all, the silent blade of an unseen enemy, tearing at our hearts and stealing more than our strength.
R. A. SALVATORE
The Silent Blade
Empathy is always guesswork. We cannot know how the other person feels. However, we do attempt to imagine feelings, which we presume are connected with the issues in the story we have been told.
PIET DRAIBY & KIRSTEN SEIDENFADEN
The Vibrant Relationship
This is what differentiates sympathy from empathy. No matter how much I care for you, it's not until I recognize me in you and you in me that the veil of gauze is lifted on the world.
JACKSON GALAXY
Cat Daddy
Education leads to enlightenment. Enlightenment opens the way to empathy. Empathy foreshadows reform.
DERRICK A. BELL
Faces at the Bottom of the Well
Empathy is like a muscle; if you don't use your inherent capacity to understand others and the situation around you accurately, it diminishes. It can be enhanced through practice or it will wither through an over-preoccupation with yourself and your needs.
ARTHUR P. CIARAMICOLI
The Curse of the Capable
Empathy is pointless
Turn your fingernails to claws
THE PHILOSOPHER KINGS
"Fingernails to Claws"
Empathy is the feeling that "I might be you" or "I am you," but it is more than just an intellectual identification; empathy must be accompanied by feeling. Sympathy brings compassion, "I want to help you," but empathy brings emotion. Without feeling there is no empathy.
HOWARD M. SPIRO
Empathy and the Practice of Medicine: Beyond Pills and the Scalpel