#empathy

"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."

"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."

"The heart of an Irishman is nothing but his imagination"

"It’s not so much the journey that’s important; as is the way that we treat those we encounter and those around us, along the way"

"After every storm, there is a rainbow. If you have eyes, you will find it. If you have wisdom, you will create it. If you have love for yourself and others, you won’t need it."

"A lion of truth never assumes anything without validity. Assumptions are quick exits for lazy minds that like to graze out in the fields without bother."

"None of us can choose where we shall love..."

"I call him religious who understands the suffering of others."

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

"People die from lack of shared empathy and affinity. By establishing social connectedness, we give hope a chance and the other can become heaven. ( "Le ciel c'est l'autre")"

"Education leads to enlightenment. Enlightenment opens the way to empathy. Empathy foreshadows reform."

"It is an absolute human certainty that no one can know his own beauty or perceive a sense of his own worth until it has been reflected back to him in the mirror of another loving, caring human being."

"There are so many men, all endlessly attempting to sweep me off my feet. And there is one of you, trying just the opposite. Making sure my feet are firm beneath me, lest I fall."

"A person feels the pain in judicious proportion to the sensitive nature cherished in own world; otherwise there is enough fun, happiness, enjoyment and pleasure in life."

"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."

"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."

"Sooner or later in life, we will all take our own turn being in the position we once had someone else in."

"Whenever you feel like criticizing any one...just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had."

"Oxford in the Inklings' day was not so different in look and smell from the Oxford of today. Then, as now, one was tempted to fantasize one's surroundings as a Camelot of intellectual knight-errantry or an Eden of serene contemplation. Then, as now, there was bound to be disappointment."

"To perceive is to suffer."