59 Thoughtful Quotes On Empathy

In a world that often feels disconnected, the power of empathy can be a transformative force, bridging the gaps between us. Empathy allows us to truly understand and share the feelings of others, fostering deeper connections and compassion. This collection of 59 thoughtful quotes on empathy serves as a reminder of the profound impact that understanding and kindness can have in our daily interactions. Whether you are seeking inspiration, comfort, or a gentle nudge towards a more empathetic mindset, these quotes offer valuable insights and motivation to cultivate empathy and create a more compassionate world.

1. “Were these boys in their right minds? Here were two boys with good intellect, one eighteen and one nineteen. They had all the prospects that life could hold out for any of the young; one a graduate of Chicago and another of Ann Arbor; one who had passed his examination for the Harvard Law School and was about to take a trip in Europe,--another who had passed at Ann Arbor, the youngest in his class, with three thousand dollars in the bank. Boys who never knew what it was to want a dollar; boys who could reach any position that was to boys of that kind to reach; boys of distinguished and honorable families, families of wealth and position, with all the world before them. And they gave it all up for nothing, for nothing! They took a little companion of one of them, on a crowded street, and killed him, for nothing, and sacrificed everything that could be of value in human life upon the crazy scheme of a couple of immature lads.Now, your Honor, you have been a boy; I have been a boy. And we have known other boys. The best way to understand somebody else is to put yourself in his place.Is it within the realm of your imagination that a boy who was right, with all the prospects of life before him, who could choose what he wanted, without the slightest reason in the world would lure a young companion to his death, and take his place in the shadow of the gallows?...No one who has the process of reasoning could doubt that a boy who would do that is not right.How insane they are I care not, whether medically or legally. They did not reason; they could not reason; they committed the most foolish, most unprovoked, most purposeless, most causeless act that any two boys ever committed, and they put themselves where the rope is dangling above their heads....Why did they kill little Bobby Franks?Not for money, not for spite; not for hate. They killed him as they might kill a spider or a fly, for the experience. They killed him because they were made that way. Because somewhere in the infinite processes that go to the making up of the boy or the man something slipped, and those unfortunate lads sit here hated, despised, outcasts, with the community shouting for their blood.. . . I know, Your Honor, that every atom of life in all this universe is bound up together. I know that a pebble cannot be thrown into the ocean without disturbing every drop of water in the sea. I know that every life is inextricably mixed and woven with every other life. I know that every influence, conscious and unconscious, acts and reacts on every living organism, and that no one can fix the blame. I know that all life is a series of infinite chances, which sometimes result one way and sometimes another. I have not the infinite wisdom that can fathom it, neither has any other human brain” - Clarence Darrow

2. “Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.” - Leo Buscaglia

3. “If we are to love our neighbors, before doing anything else we must see our neighbors. With our imagination as well as our eyes, that is to say like artists, we must see not just their faces but the life behind and within their faces. Here it is love that is the frame we see them in.” - Frederick Buechner

4. “Can I see anothers woe,And not be in sorrow too.Can I see anothers grief,And not seek for kind relief.- On Anothers Sorrow” - William Blake

5. “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

6. “All that we can't say is all we need to hear.” - Ben Harper

7. “I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the wounded person.” - Walt Whitman

8. “It's the hardest thing in the world to go on being aware of someone else's pain.” - Pat Barker

9. “When in Reading Gaol he told me that the warders in the dock had been gentle and kind, but the visit of the chaplain in his first prison began with these words:'Mr. Wilde, did you have morning prayers in your house?''I am sorry... I fear not.''You see where you are now!” - Charles Ricketts

10. “All novels . . . are concerned with the enigma of the self. As soon as you create an imaginary being, a character, you are automatically confronted by the question: what is the self? How can it be grasped?” - Milan Kundera

11. “It contributes greatly towards a man's moral and intellectual health, to be brought into habits of companionship with individuals unlike himself, who care little for his pursuits, and whose sphere and abilities he must go out of himself to appreciate.” - Nathaniel Hawthorne

12. “So true it is, and so terrible too, that up to a certain point the thought or sight of misery enlists our best affections; but, in certain special cases, beyond that point it does not. They err who would assert that invariably this is owing to the inherent selfishness of the human heart. It rather proceeds from a certain hopelessness of remedying excessive and organic ill. To a sensitive being, pity is not seldom pain. And when at last it is perceived that such pity cannot lead to effectual succor, common sense bids the soul rid of it.” - Herman Melville

13. “The heart of an Irishman is nothing but his imagination” - George Bernard Shaw

14. “Humans have long since possessed the tools for crafting a better world. Where love, compassion, altruism and justice have failed, genetic manipulation will not succeed.” - Gina Maranto

15. “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

16. “Anguish is the universal language” - Alice Fulton

17. “This place was truly the highest and the lowest of all worlds - the most beautiful senses, the most exquisite emotions.. the most malevolent desires, the darkest deeds. Perhaps it was meant to be so. Perhaps without the lows, the highs could not be reached.” - Stephenie Meyer

18. “Among all the creatures of creation, the gods favor us: We are the only ones who can empathize with their problems.” - David M. Eagleman

19. “...treat people with understanding when you can, and fake it when you can'tuntil you do understand.” - Kim Harrison

20. “The quality you most admire in a man? Courage moral and physical: 'anima'—the ability to think like a woman. Also a sense of the absurd.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.” - Christopher Hitchens

21. “Help someone, you earn a friend. Help someone too much, you make an enemy.” - Erol Ozan

22. “Becoming aware of the intense suffering of billions of animals, and of our own participation in that suffering, can bring up painful emotions: sorrow and grief for the animals; anger at the injustice and deception of the system; despair at the enormity of the problem; fear that trusted authorities and institutions are, in fact, untrustworthy; and guilt for having contributed to the problem. Bearing witness means choosing to suffer. Indeed, empathy is literally 'feeling with.' Choosing to suffer is particularly difficult in a culture that is addicted to comfort--a culture that teaches that pain should be avoided whenever possible and that ignorance is bliss. We can reduce our resistance to witnessing by valuing authenticity over personal pleasure, and integration over ignorance.” - Melanie Joy

23. “But why must the system go to such lengths to block our empathy? Why all the psychological acrobatics? The answer is simple: because we care about animals, and we don't want them to suffer. And because we eat them. Our values and behaviors are incongruent, and this incongruence causes us a certain degree of moral discomfort. In order to alleviate this discomfort, we have three choices: we can change our values to match our behaviors, we can change our behaviors to match our values, or we can change our perception of our behaviors so that they appear to match our values. It is around this third option that our schema of meat is shaped. As long as we neither value unnecessary animal suffering nor stop eating animals, our schema will distort our perceptions of animals and the meat we eat, so that we feel comfortable enough to consume them. And the system that constructs our schema of meat equips us with the means by which to do this.” - Melanie Joy

24. “попробуй выучиться одному нехитрому фокусу, Глазастик, - сказал он. - Тогда тебе куда легче будет ладить с самыми разными людьми. Нельзя по-настоящему понять человека, пока не станешь на его точку зрения...- Это как?- Надо влезть в его шкуру и походить в ней.(Аттикус Финч - Глазастику Финч)” - Harper Lee

25. “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

26. “I think people believe empathy to be compassion, that compassion is an inner sense (a sense of the soul). But empathy is a sense, while compassion isn't a sense. Empathy is an affinity, a communion, a comprehension. They say that empathy is compassion, but I think that the two are independent of each other. You see, through empathy you will feel what another is feeling, including all those plans for manipulation and persuasion. You will feel everything, not just the parts that make you take compassion for the person, but also all the red flags! You see, empathy is a sense that works with the other senses such as foresight and intuition. So, we can feel compassion but we have to move with empathy.” - C. JoyBell C.

27. “Holden went to his bungalow and began to understand that he was not alone in the world, and also that he was afraid for the sake of another, -- which is the most soul-satisfying fear known to man.” - Rudyard Kipling

28. “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

29. “Good works is giving to the poor and the helpless, but divine works is showing them their worth to the One who matters.” - Criss Jami

30. “Do you know what it is?' [Toby] said thoughtfully. 'It's that they haven't had anything really awful happen to them. No wonder they seem so superficial and unfeeling.' It was certainly an interesting theory, ... [but] surely one didn't need to have suffered in order to possess empathy for those who had? All it required was a bit of imagination and a well-stocked library.” - Michelle Cooper

31. “She sang, as requested. There was much about love in the ballad: faithful love that refused to abandon its object; love that disaster could not shake; love that, in calamity, waxed fonder, in poverty clung closer. The words were set to a fine old air -- in themselves they were simple and sweet: perhaps, when read, they wanted force; when well sung, they wanted nothing. Shirley sang them well: she breathed into the feeling, softness, she poured round the passion, force: her voice was fine that evening; its expression dramatic: she impressed all, and charmed one.On leaving the instrument, she went to the fire, and sat down on a seat -- semi-stool, semi-cushion: the ladies were round her -- none of them spoke. The Misses Sympson and the Misses Nunnely looked upon her, as quiet poultry might look on an egret, an ibis, or any other strange fowl. What made her sing so? They never sang so. Was it proper to sing with such expression, with such originality -- so unlike a school girl? Decidedly not: it was strange, it was unusual. What was strange must be wrong; what was unusual must be improper. Shirley was judged.” - Charlotte Brontë

32. “There is no small act of kindness.Every compassionate act makes large the world.” - Mary Anne Radmacher

33. “(In part, quoting Robert Keegan from Harvard):'When we take the risk of really witnessing another human being, when we validate their human experience, we risk becoming recruited to their welfare.' I allow my empathy to be engaged, and once it is - because my feelings help teach me what my values are - I'm on the path for which there is no return. I am inexorably an advocate when I allow my empathy to be engaged.” - Ashley Judd

34. “He said that he was sure you would be amendable to this course of action." April paused, eyes widening, before she said indignantly, "I believe he may have lied to me!” - Seanan McGuire

35. “Whenever you are about to find fault with someone, ask yourself the following question: What fault of mine most nearly resembles the one I am about to criticize?” - Marcus Aurelius

36. “I'm a citizen of the republic of empathy.” - Sam Lipsyte

37. “One doesn’t have to operate with great malice to do great harm. The absence of empathy and understanding are sufficient. In fact, a man convinced of his virtue even in the midst of his vice is the worst kind of man.” - Charles M. Blow

38. “Since I was a small girl, I have lived inside this cottage, shelted by its roof and walls. I have known of people suffering—I have not been blind to them in the way that privilege allows, the way my own husband and now my daughter are blind. It is a statement of fact and not a judgement to say Charlie and Ella’s minds aren’t oriented in that direction; in a way, it absolves them, whereas the unlucky have knocked on the door of my consciousness, they have emerged from the forest and knocked many times over the course of my life, and I have only occasionally allowed them entry. I’ve done more than nothing and much less than I could have. I have laid inside, beneath a quilt on a comfortable couch, in a kind of reverie, and when I heard the unlucky outside my cottage, sometimes I passed them coins or scraps of food, and sometimes I ignored them altogether; if I ignored them, they had no choice but to walk back into the woods, and when they grew weak or got lost or were circled by wolves, I pretended I couldn’t hear them calling my name.” - Curtis Sittenfeld

39. “...the best way to forgive someone is to enter into their sufferings ...” - John Geddes

40. “Positivity can be a negative," I tell her, "if it's used to diminish events that should be cause for concern. Saying 'bad things happen to good people' or "God doesn't give anyone more than they can handle', for instance, isn't necessarily helpful to the person to whom something bad happened--it is much more beneficial to those who wish to be dismissive- who don't really care to think about the why or how or who. And if we cease to see the real human part in events--if instead, we relegate human experiences to some sort of mystical concept like karma, destiny or everything happens for a reason, and consider more realistic views to be negative--then we diminish compassion and empathy, as well as the possibility of positive change.” - Jane Devin

41. “It would be a poor result of all our anguish and our wrestling if we won nothing but our old selves at the end of it—if we could return to the same blind loves, the same self-confident blame, the same light thoughts of human suffering, the same frivolous gossip over blighted human lives, the same feeble sense of that Unknown towards which we have sent forth irrepressible cries in our loneliness. Let us rather be thankful that our sorrow lives in us as an indestructible force, only changing its form, as forces do, and passing from pain into sympathy—the one poor word which includes all our best insight and our best love.” - George Eliot

42. “One of his greatest talents was empathy; no sadist can aspire to perfection without that diagnostic ability.” - Vernor Vinge

43. “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

44. “He'd always known that shit rolled downhill, but he never knew tears did the same thing.” - Amy Lane

45. “Accustom yourself not to be disregarding of what someone else has to say: as far as possible enter into the mind of the speaker.” - Marcus Aurelius

46. “Before you criticize a man, walk a mile in his shoes. That way, when you do criticize him, you'll be a mile away and have his shoes.” - Steve Martin

47. “Racism is not merely a simplistic hatred. It is, more often, broad sympathy toward some and broader skepticism toward others.” - Ta-Nehisi Coates

48. “Successful hunting, it could be said, is an act of terminal empathy: the kill depends on how successfully a hunter inserts himself into the umwelt of his prey--even to the point of disguising himself as that animal and mimicking its behavior.” - John Vaillant

49. “The main condition for the achievement of love is the overcoming of one's narcissism. The narcissistic orientation is one in which one experiences as real only that which exists within oneself, while the phenomena in the outside world have no reality in themselves, but are experienced only from the viewpoint of their being useful or dangerous to one. The opposite pole to narcissism is objectivity; it is the faculty to see other people and things as they are, objectively, and to be able to separate this objective picture from a picture which is formed by one's desires and fears.” - Erich Fromm

50. “Be me a little.” - John Ajvide Lindqvist

51. “Neither did she realise yet that grief is a kind of glue, too, that the essence of humanity is this empathy, and that we fall together in that moment of tenderest perception when we see and feel each other's wounds and know another's sorrow like a brother of our own.” - Niall Williams

52. “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

53. “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

54. “• People deserve a break. The stressed and unorganized person who doesn’t have the same priorities as you may be dealing with an autistic child, abusive spouse, fading parents, or cancer. Don’t judge people until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes. Give them a break instead.” - Guy Kawasaki

55. “We live close together and we live far apart. We all go through the same things-it's all just a different kind of the same thing.” - Susan Glaspell

56. “The glory of fame isn't in having so many people know you, but in having so many people know you care. Otherwise, it's like being drawn to a fire to find no warmth.” - Richelle E. Goodrich

57. “Maybe your empathy's just a comforting lie, you ever think of that? Maybe you think you know how the other person feels but you're only feeling yourself, maybe you're even worse than me. Or maybe we're all just guessing.” - Peter Watts

58. “seeing with the eyes of another, listening with the ears of another, and feeling with the heart of another.” - Alfred Adler

59. “There is no greater intelligence than kindness and empathy.” - Bryant McGill