One of his greatest talents was empathy; no sadist can aspire to perfection without that diagnostic ability.
People can be cruel, deadly, heartless, selfish, disrespectful. They can be vice-ridden and lack any basic empathy toward their fellow man.
Only by examining our personal biases can we truly grow as artists; only by cultivating empathy can we truly grow as people.
The women ranged in age, but they were all old enough to know that in the currency of friendship, empathy is more valuable than accuracy.
The circle of indifference has the self at its centre. The circle of compassion has others at the centre. The former leads to apathy; the latter to empathy.
It was crime at its purest, in which empathy, that most fundamental aspect of human morality, evaporated and another being became only a target for untamed fantasy.
Children arrive animists. They learn about life, themselves, and empathy by imagining the liveliness of everything they come into contact with.
When someone is suffering, there is a deep, visceral reaction in the core of our being, a flood of empathy and a frightfully desperate compulsion to give aid.
I felt the kind of desperation, I think, that cancels the possibility of empathy...that makes you unkind.
On many issues, empathy can pull us in the wrong direction. The outrage that comes from adopting the perspective of a victim can drive an appetite for retribution.
What Mr. Obama wants in a nominee isn't really 'empathy' and 'understanding.' He wants a liberal, activist Supreme Court justice.
I got a lot of empathy from my mother growing up, and I think it prevented me from ever really just writing people off.
To forgive a friend, one must practice generosity. To forgive an enemy, one must practice empathy. To forgive yourself requires charity. Forgiveness is a sacred act of gallantry.
Writing fiction is one of the greatest forms of empathy. It's not enough to simply write from the perspective of your characters...you have to feel what they feel.
Our culture encourages women to nurture men, making it predictable that many experience a seductive empathy for abusive men, as well as the misguided hope that love can obliterate an ugly past.
I think one of the biggest political failures, and the biggest social failures, over the past few years has been the failure of empathy; not being able to look at the other person down the street.
I have a great deal of empathy for anyone who's having a hard time. I believe this ability to see another's viewpoint has served me well as a writer.
The youngest children have a great capacity for empathy and altruism. There's a recent study that shows even 14-month-olds will climb across a bunch of cushions and go across a room to give you a pen if you drop one.
Imaginative empathy is one of the great gifts that humans have, and it means that we can live more than one life. We can picture what it would be like from another perspective.
I have great empathy for all the contestants that come on 'Top Chef,' whether they go home right away or they make it to the finish line. It's a very vulnerable position they put themselves in and I feel for them.
I have a profound empathy for people who are in the public eye, whether they manifest it themselves or whether it happened by accident - it doesn't matter to me. I think there's a great misunderstanding of what it is to be famous.
