Empathy quotes
672 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside empathy — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"The emotions of the spectator will still be very apt to fall short of the violence of what is felt by the sufferer. Mankind, though naturally sympathetic, never conceive, for what has befallen another, that degree of passion which naturally animates the person principally concerned."
"A fly rod extends a fly fisher's being as surely as do imagination, empathy or prayer."
"I believe in empathy. When religion provides that for people, it's the best thing in the world."
"But compassion isn't about solutions. It's about giving all the love that you've got."
"The quality you most admire in a woman? Courage moral and physical: "anima"-the ability to visualize the mind and need of a man. Also a sense of the absurd."
"Shame derives its power from being unspeakable...If we speak shame, it begins to wither. Just the way exposure to light was deadly for the gremlins, language and story bring light to shame and destroy it."
"There really is "no effort without error and shortcoming" and there really is no triumph without vulnerability."
"Shame cannot survive being spoken. It cannot survive empathy."
"There are two side to every issue."
"In all people I see myself - none more, and not one a barleycorn less; And the good or bad I say of myself, I say of them."
"Part of the particular interest and beauty of science fiction and fantasy: writer and reader collaborate in world-making."
"From a purely external point of view there is no will; and to find will in any phenomenon requires a certain empathy; we observe aman's actions and place ourselves partly but not wholly in his position; or we act, and place ourselves partly in the position of an outsider."
"Bless you for your jealousy; it is a sign of empathy."
"I am aware of the sufferings of women in India, which is also the suffering of women in many, many countries on our planet. My heart is filled with empathy and love for them."
"I know Bret Easton Ellis has said he has some amount of empathy for every character he has written about, though, so maybe I am similar to him in terms of that. I'm not sure what he thinks exactly."
"Ecstasy is a complex emotion containing elements of joy, fear, terror, triumph, surrender, and empathy. What has replaced our prehistoric understanding of this complex of ecstasy now is the word comfort, a tremendously bloodless notion. Drugs are not comfortable, and anyone who thinks they are comfortable or even escapist should not toy with drugs unless they’re willing to get their noses rubbed in their own stuff."
"I think your main draws are instinct, intuition and empathy... those things that you can't really practice."
"You can be right or you can have empathy. You can't do both."
"My job is to have empathy and curiosity for things that I've never done. Also, I'm a person whom people talk to."
"Without exception, empathy is always appropriate."
