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Empathy Quotes

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Empathy Quotes

“To care means first of all to empty our own cup and to allow the other to come close to us. It means to take away the many barriers which prevent us from entering into communion with the other. When we dare to care, then we discover that nothing human is foreign to us, but that all the hatred and love, cruelty and compassion, fear and joy can be found in our own hearts. When we dare to care, we have to confess that when others kill, I could have killed too. When others torture, I could have done the same. When others heal, I could have healed too. And when others give life, I could have done the same. Then we experience that we can be present to the soldier who kills, to the guard who pesters, to the young man who plays as if life has no end, and to the old man who stopped playing out of fear for death. By the honest recognition and confession of our human sameness, we can participate in the care of God who came, not to the powerful but powerless, not to be different but the same, not to take our pain away but to share it. Through this participation we can open our hearts to each other and form a new community.”

“There's nothing wrong with your color, being you," he said firmly. "Nothing wrong with what the good Lord gives us in His world, Cussy Mary." He didn't know, couldn't know, the load I'd carried as a Blue, the scorn and hatred and gruesome marriage. How dare Pa call me vain and now Jackson. How dare he too? "Nothing wrong—" Jackson repeated. I stepped back and shot out a shaky hand. "No, Jackson Lovett, you're wrong. There is nothing wrong with your color in your world, a world that wants only whiteness.”

“Yabancı Yarim (Sonnet 2701) Yabancı olarak doğmak ayıp değil, ama yabancı olarak ölmek en büyük lanettir. To be born as foreigner is normal, but to die as foreigner is animal. To salute the flag is just as animal as burning a flag, to obey the scripture blind is just as savage as burning a scripture. Delegational democracy is just as undignified as autocracy, blind abidance of law is just as primitive as anarchy. I look after the world as family, so the world may look after my family, when I'm not there - that's the kind of blind faith that actually makes a difference. To curse is animal, to console, human. If you must be blind, be blind in tolerance.”

“Когда дети в спокойной обстановке разговаривают о своей жизни, идет важный процесс, в ходе которого они пытаются хоть на некоторое время увидеть мир глазами другого человека. При этом мы можем донести до детей также и мысль о том, что в жизни есть множество различных способов выражения любви. Некоторые люди всю свою жизнь проводят в поисках только одного, определенного проявления любви и нигде не находят его, в то время как окружающие проявляют свою любовь к ним всеми возможными способами, кроме искомого. Поскольку все люди жаждут любви, умение видеть ее различные проявления — важная составляющая искусства быть счастливыми.”

“The pain I absorbed seemed to float toward me like mist on a cool spring morning. It was a mix of melancholy love for the timbered mountainous country that surrounded us, the grief of separation from family, and a wound within the soul that agonizes beyond the words that describe love. These feelings permeated my skin, seeping deep within the cells of my body.”

“It was a situation sincere hearts find themselves in of raw, dirty discomfort they cannot share. A day-to- day, on-the-ground, actual trouble of skin and reality—like flat tires, psychotic parents, immobilized brothers—a pain that the restless world would have no patience for and so was kept secret in the shadows of tragedy along with lost people, lost things, and real life.”

“It is impossible for white Americans to grasp the depths and dimensions of the Negro’s dilemma without understanding what it means to be a Negro in America. Of course it is not easy to perform this act of empathy. Putting oneself in another person’s place is always fraught with difficulties. Over and over again it is said in the black ghettos of America that “no white person can ever understand what it means to be a Negro.” There is good reason for this assumption, for there is very little in the life and experience of white America that can compare to the curse this society has put on color. And yet, if the present chasm of hostility, fear and distrust is to be bridged, the white man must begin to walk in the pathways of his black brothers and feel some of the pain and hurt that throb without letup in their daily lives.”

“When we tell those stories to people in chronic pain, or those living with incurable illness, we often end up minimizing their experience. We end up expressing our doubt in the face of their certainty, which only compounds the extent to which pain separates the person experiencing it from the wider social order. The challenge and responsibility of per- sonhood, it seems to me, is to recognize personhood in others-to listen to others' pain and take it seriously, even when you yourself cannot feel it. That capacity for listening, I think, really does separate human life from the quasi-life of an enterovirus.”

“What happens out there is public—or at least fairly public," he qualified. "And what happens when somebody speaks or writes words—that's also public. But the things that go on inside these little circles are private. Private." He laid a hand on his chest. "Private." He rubbed his forehead. "Private." He touched his eyelids and the tip of his nose with a brown forefinger. "Now let's make a simple experiment. Say the word 'pinch.' " "Pinch," said the class in ragged unison. "Pinch . . ." "P-I-N-C-H—pinch. That's public, that's something you can look up in the dictionary. But now pinch yourselves. Hard! Harder!" To an accompaniment of giggles, of aies and ows, the children did as they were told. "Can anybody feel what the person sitting next to him is feeling?" There was a chorus of noes. "So it looks," said the young man, "as though there were-— let's see, how many are we?" He ran his eyes over the desks before him. "It looks as though there were twenty-three distinct and separate pains. Twenty-three in this one room. Nearly three thousand million of them in the whole world. Plus the pains of all the animals. And each of these pains is strictly private. There's no way of passing the experience from one center of pain to another center of pain.”

“Life is paradoxical, but it is enough for me. Ridiculous conflicts and inconsistencies admittedly congeal into what I term the self. Personal growth commences by honing in on the troubling personal issues. I am my only enemy. A radiant soul strives for self-enrichment by passionately pursuing the serious tasks and delights of living including expressing empathy for other people. I will explore the world and attempt to eliminate the perversions of my own egocentric being.”

“And this is the most provocative situation, is it not? It invites abuse, manipulation, tyranny, subjection. A person is supposed to accommodate herself--himself--absolutely to another person. It is unnatural. OK, but it's nature that sets it up in the first place. Of course, of course. It is unnatural and provocative and precarious and challenging. It demands forbearance and stamina and abnormal powers of empathy and perception. It is also... And yes, it is also all those other things. The opposite. The converse. The place you want to be.”

“I'm not asking you to walk in my shoes; I'd never wish my afflictions on anyone. But could you walk beside me on secure ground and reach to hold my hand?”

“You cannot fully understand a person's need until you have endured the same need. As hard as you may try to predict and comprehend their situation and suffering, I guarantee you'll fall short until you've been there.”

“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 but knowing that they should be there, can bring new life in a dying heart. Those who are not afraid to hold a hand in gratitude, to shed tears in grief, and to let a sigh of distress arise straight from the heart, can break through paralyzing boundaries and witness the birth of a new fellowship, the fellowship of the broken.”