This week’s virtue is empathy. Empathy is the capability to understand the thoughts, emotions, and experiences of others.

Good morning and welcome to another edition of “Wisdom Wednesday”. Each week I will post motivational quotes on various virtues. Last week’s virtue was humor. This week’s virtue is the wonderful virtue of empathy.

Empathy is the capability to equally understand the situations, thoughts, emotions, motives, and experiences of others. It goes past sympathy, which is an emotion of concern and consideration for the pain of others. Both words have comparable usage but vary in their emotional meanings.

10 Wisdom Wednesday/Virtue Quotes: Empathy

  1. “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
  2. “I think we are living in selfish times. I’m the first one to say that I’m the most selfish. We live in the so-called ‘first world,’ and we may be first in a lot of things like technology, but we are behind in empathy.”—Javier Bardem
  3. “When you start to develop your powers of empathy and imagination, the whole world opens up to you.”—Susan Sarandon
  4. “Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone…just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.” ― F. Scott Fitzgerald
  5. “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
  6. “Resolve to be tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant with the weak and wrong. Sometime in your life, you will have been all of these.” ― Gautama Buddha
  7. “We live in a culture that discourages empathy. A culture that too often tells us our principle goal in life is to be rich, thin, young, famous, safe, and entertained.”— Barack Obama
  8. “If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from his angle as well as your own.”— Henry Ford
  9. “Leadership is about empathy. It is about having the ability to relate to and connect with people for the purpose of inspiring and empowering their lives.”– Oprah Winfrey
  10. “Deep listening is the kind of listening that can help relieve the suffering of another person. You can call it compassionate listening. You listen with only one purpose: to help him or her to empty his heart.” Thich Nhat Hanh

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