#empathy

When my sister was released from the mental hospital, she came to live with me in the tilting and crumbling one-bedroom house I'd bought with the small amount of money I inherited when our parents died. She arrived one afternoon unannounced in a taxi. She must have known instinctively that I'd take her in. I don't know how or why they released her. Probably due to overcrowding, and they had her scratch her name on a form then pushed her out the door. Or maybe she just slipped away when no one was looking (who'd notice in a place like that?)--she never did tell me and I didn't ask her. I was so happy to have her with me again that the last thing I wanted to do was break the spell by letting reality intrude. Ever since they'd dragged her away weeping with laughter and reaching out for me with our parents' blood still coating her hands with shiny red gloves, I'd felt amputated, like they'd pulled her kicking and screaming and insane out of my guts. ↗

— Michael Gira

#money

We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer. ↗

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

#empathy #kindness #suffering #understanding-others #suffering

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

#humanity #connection

Too many people are endowed with a feeling of entitlement, but born without God-given empathy. ↗

— C. JoyBell C.

#pitfalls-of-the-human-race #truth-quotes #wisdom-quotes #empathy

I grew up with lots of animals and I related more to them than I did to people. I feel a lot of empathy for them. ↗

— Neko Case

#empathy #feel #grew #i #i feel

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

All I ever wanted was to reach out and touch another human being not just with my hands but with my heart. ↗

— Tahereh Mafi

#empathy #loneliness #love #love

But love, honest love, requires empathy. It is a sharing—of joy, of pain, of laughter, and of tears. Honest love makes one’s soul a reflection of the partner’s moods. And as a room seems larger when it is lined with mirrors, so do the joys become amplified. And as the individual items within the mirrored room seem less acute, so does pain diminish and fade, stretched thin by the sharing. That is the beauty of love, whether in passion or friendship. A sharing that multiplies the joys and thins the pains. ↗

— R.A. Salvatore

#the-silent-blade #beauty

While eschewing emotion - and its companion, vulnerability - Obama should be careful not to sacrifice empathy, the 'I feel your pain' connection that sustained Clinton. This connection is the shorthand people use to measure their leaders' intentions. If people believe you're on their side, they will trust your decisions. ↗

— Dee Dee Myers

#believe #careful #clinton #companion #connection

Empathy is really the opposite of spiritual meanness. It's the capacity to understand that every war is both won and lost. And that someone else's pain is as meaningful as your own. ↗

— Barbara Kingsolver

#capacity #else #empathy #every #lost