#empathy

You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that 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 had ever been alive. ↗

— James Baldwin

#empathy #pain #reading #people

I did not know how to reach him, how to catch up with him... The land of tears is so mysterious. ↗

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

#empathy #sadness #sympathy #comfort

Close both eyes see with the other one. Then we are no longer saddled by the burden of our persistent judgments our ceaseless withholding our constant exclusion. Our sphere has widened and we find ourselves quite unexpectedly in a new expansive location in a place of endless acceptance and infinite love. ↗

— Gregory Boyle

#compassion #empathy #unconditional-love #love

When good people consider you the bad guy, you develop a heart to help the bad ones. You actually understand them. ↗

— Criss Jami

#bad-people #compassion #compassionate #comprehend #comprehending

It’s like when you’re excited about a girl and you see a couple holding hands, and you feel so happy for them. And other times you see the same couple, and they make you so mad. And all you want is to feel happy for them because you know that if you do, then it means you’re happy, too. ↗

— Stephen Chbosky

#yearning #madness

It is not learning we need at all. Individuals need learning but the culture needs something else, the pulse of light on the sea, the warm urge of huddling together to keep out the cold. We need empathy, we need the eyes that still can weep. ↗

— Lydia Millet

#empathy

He's really sort of the devil. He's completely emotionally detached. He has no empathy. You find that in psychopaths. It's about power with Voldemort. It's an aphrodisiac for him. Power makes him feel alive. ↗

— Ralph Fiennes

#alive #aphrodisiac #completely #detached #devil

My grandmother was an unparalleled storyteller who gave me a preview of how life might turn out, and also fortified my empathy. ↗

— Chris Ware

#empathy #fortified #gave #grandmother #how

I've noticed that about your people, Doctor. You find it easier to understand the death of one than the death of a million. You speak about the objective hardness of the Vulcan heart, yet how little room there seems to be in yours. ↗

— Leonard Nimoy

#compassion #death #empathy #mourning #objectivity

When you sing with a group of people, you learn how to subsume yourself into a group consciousness because a capella singing is all about the immersion of the self into the community. That's one of the great feelings - to stop being me for a little while and to become us. That way lies empathy, the great social virtue. ↗

— Brian Eno

#because #become #being #community #consciousness