empathy

To label someone as selfless is symptomatic of having bought the preposterous claim that a human being can have great concern for other human beings and little concern for themselves, or that, when taken to extremes, a human being can have great concern for other human beings and absolutely no concern for themselves.

So many people of liberal persuasion value their own progressive opinions more than they value the people they hold those opinions about.

Every single good person is a good person for their own sake, not for the sake of humanity, not even for the sake of another human being.

If you've been on this side, then you'll have more compassion and understanding for those still on this side when you get to the other side, because you know how it feels like to be on this side. Sometimes though, relief comes too sudden and good that we tend to lose our sense of empathy for those still on this side, and it's amazing how we've forgotten so soon how it felt like to be on this side. How would it have felt if you were treated the same way you treat those who are on this side by those who were on the other side, when you were still on this side, now that you are on the other side?

Remember how strong we are in our happiness and how weak he is in his misery!

It is humanly impossible to be selfless. As a matter of fact, human beings are inherently selfish.

In my view, compassion takes empathy to another level. With compassion, there is an internal calling to move empathy into action. Compassion is love in action.

How much of assumed national and personal character comes from the fact that we have never truly known need to the point of having our character tested? Willing conscientious objectors underwent controlled starvation and confirmed how quickly it impacts the initiative and generosity we like to think of as "American" characteristics.

You don't think any job's a job unless it's your job.

It is only when you suffer that you truly understand.

Depression can seem absurdly self aggrandizing to those who do not experience it, But that does not make it any less painful to those who do.

It is not rubbish! It is the part of people that you do not understand.

Storms don't come to teach us painful lessons, rather they were meant to wash us clean.

A best friend is the one person that doesn't leave you worse off by their actions or yours.

Sympathy is imagining the pain. Empathy is having suffered through it first.

I am not interested in whether you've stood with the great. I am interested in whether you've sat broken.

There is something so awe-inspiring in great afflictions that even in the worst times the first emotion of a crowd has generally been to sympathise with the sufferer in a great catastrophe.

The time has come for women and men to band together to jointly create gender harmony. We must gather in mixed group to plumb new depths of relational awareness, courageous truth-telling, compassionate listening, empathic sensitivity, and mutual healing.