Empathetic Engagement Quotes

I think there's some evidence that when it comes to being a doctor or nurse, a police officer or therapist, that empathetic engagement leads to burn-out. Imagine if you're dealing with severely ill children, and you felt their pain all the time, and the pain of their parents - you wouldn't be able to do that job for very long. It would kill you.

Feel the world, instead of trying to understand the world.

I begin each day with holy Mass, receiving Jesus hidden under the appearance of a simple piece of bread. Then I go out into the streets and I find the same Jesus hidden in the dying destitute, the AIDS patients, the lepers, the abandoned children, the hungry, and the homeless. It's the same Jesus.

The love of novels is the preference of sentiment to the senses.

Compassion is of little value if it just remains an idea. It must motivate how we respond to others and be reflective in all our thoughts and actions

You don't play a game or color a picture with a child to show your superiority. Rather, you choose to limit yourself so as to facilitate and honor that relationship.

The principle of compassion is that which converts disillusionment into a participatory companionship. This is the basic love, the charity, that turns a critic into a living human being who has something to give to - as well as to demand of - the world.

People may excite in themselves a glow of compassion, not by toasting their feet at the fire, and saying: "Lord, teach me compassion," but by going and seeking an object that requires compassion.

I get letters from people about my work. The thing that pleases me most is that my work touches their feelings. In fact, they don't talk about the paintings. They end up telling me the story of their life or how their father died.

Compassion has to become a discipline. It's something that you do. It's no good thinking that you agree with compassion or not, you've just got to do it. Just like it's no good agreeing that it's possible to float, you just have to get into the pool and then you learn that it's possible.

We still make love to organs and not people; that so far from realising that people are never more idiosyncratic, never more totally there when they make love, we re never more incommunicative, never more alone.

I think the most important key to quality communication and interaction is developing an interest in the person you're talking with. Most women know the secret to a quality conversation is to ask quality questions and have a sincere interest in hearing the answers. In fact, the best communicators very often say the least. It's not the extrovert who dominates the conversation that a client feels most connected with, but rather the individual who shows a real and sincere interest in knowing about the life of the person they're talking with.

Rejecting joy to stand in solidarity with the suffering doesn't rescue the suffering.

The Internet is allowing for us to really experience people in some of the most distant places in the world - as other people just like us. So get to know people, seek out bloggers from a country you're kind of curious about. It's about building empathy and breaking through to the point of recognizing people as people.

The ability to be present with every single person and engage was a great model for me of the work that a writer needs to do. Writers, living or dead, still guide me in many ways.

In order to be able to cooperate with a child, you have to come down to below their level in order to communicate with them. Actors are also like children.

My own sense of well-being and purpose in the world. That comes from studying the world feelingly, with empathy in my work. It comes from staying alert and alive and involved in the lives of the people that I love and the people in the wider world who need my help.

I argue that we should be kind, we should be compassionate, and we should definitely be reasonable and rational, but that empathy leads us astray.

It's important for presidents to emotionally connect, with the country in times of crisis, but also with people in Washington. If you can't emotionally connect - and [Barack] Obama is not the greatest, but he can at least do it - then people won't be with you when the times are hard.

I feel really connected to these young ladies I get to work with; I'm dancing around with them and playing music for them. We sit down and get to know each other so we have a shorthand.

I've actually found - especially doing my cabaret show - I'm connecting with people in a way I haven't connected with them. I've found that when you're open and honest, people respond to that, whatever you're being open and honest about. You could then, when you lay that as the groundwork, say, "Here I am. This is what I think. I come in peace." Then you're able to push out, to be able to talk about more things. And that's been a really heartening thing about my life, actually.

The idea of the Bodhisattva is the one who out of his realization of transcendence participates in the world. The imitation of Christ is joyful participation in the sorrows of the world.

You never know how a single interaction with a person might affect their life, so you must constantly try to be at your best.

Do not avoid contact with suffering or close your eyes before suffering. Do not lose awareness of the existence of suffering in the life of the world. Find ways to be with those who are suffering by all means, including personal contact and visits, images, sounds. By such means, awaken yourself and others to the reality of suffering in the world.

Men seldom give pleasure when they are not pleased themselves.