#empathy

Poets have to be sensitive to their audience, but it does not mean that they censor themselves. I realise my audience is diverse. Some will read with empathy and curiosity while others will take offense. ↗

— John Barton

#censor #curiosity #diverse #does #empathy

Some people think only intellect counts: knowing how to solve problems, knowing how to get by, knowing how to identify an advantage and seize it. But the functions of intellect are insufficient without courage, love, friendship, compassion, and empathy. ↗

— Dean Koontz

#compassion #empathy #friendship #intellect #courage

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 it when they expressed it in much gentler ways -- they were trying to tell us how hurt they felt that some of their most sacred needs were not being respected by the way we were trying to meet our economic and military needs -- they got progressively more agitated. Finally, they got so agitated that it took horrible form. ↗

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

#empathy #gentleness #nonviolence #peace #terrorism

Resolve to be tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant with the weak and wrong. Sometime in your life, you will have been all of these. ↗

— Gautama Buddha

#age

Indeed, insight is the true hallmark of empathy. The power of true empathy is its ability to give us a fresh understanding of the other person's emotions and thoughts to illuminate an aspect of their experience that would not have been apparent to us had we not stepped into their shoes. ↗

— Guy Winch

#experience

The misery of other people is only an abstraction [...] something that can be sympathized with only by drawing from one's own experiences. But as it stands, true empathy remains impossible. And so long as it is, people will continue to suffer the pressure of their seemingly singular existence. ↗

— Nicole Krauss

#experiences #loneliness #misery #experience

Misery comes to miser; joy comes to wiser. (A Very Hot Cup of Tea, Empathy) Juvenile invites, youth tries, adult applies, and the old man dies. (A Straw Man, Empathy) In everyone, there lives a superhero. (The Medicine Man, Empathy) Faith is the strongest word in any dictionary. (The Wisdom Beard, Empathy) I’ve entered into your feelings; it’s your turn now. (Empathy) ↗

— D.R. Mirror

#death-and-dying #empathy #fiction #short-story #death

Thanksgiving dinner's sad and thankless. Christmas dinner's dark and blue. When you stop and try to see it From the turkey's point of view. Sunday dinner isn't sunny. Easter feasts are just bad luck. When you see it from the viewpoint of a chicken or a duck. Oh how I once loved tuna salad Pork and lobsters, lamb chops too Till I stopped and looked at dinner From the dinner's point of view. ↗

— Shel Silverstein

#food #food-for-thought #vegetarianism #food

...the best way to forgive someone is to enter into their sufferings ... ↗

— John Geddes

#forgiveness #forgiveness

For you see, when us people who know run into each other that's an event. It almost never happens. Sometimes we meet each other and neither guesses that the other is one who knows. That's a bad thing. It's happened to me a lot of times. But you see there are so few of us. ↗

— Carson McCullers

#empathy #friendship #knowing #knowledge #meeting