Misery is, by her own nature, a passing phase of sorrow, one that does not linger uninvited. Her sojourns seem to be part of life's required curriculum, perhaps because Misery endows us with compassion and empathy.
There are many respects in which America, if it can bring itself to act with the magnanimity and the empathy appropriate to its size and power, can be an intelligent example to the world.
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.
Insects are living metaphors for me. They are so alien and so remote and so perfect, but also they are emotionless; they don't have any human or mammalian instincts. They'll eat their young at the drop of a hat; they can eat your house! There's no empathy - none.
Travel is the only way to get empathy for other people's mindsets - to know their struggles and what they're drawn to.
If the only people we are able to extend empathy to are those who are like us, who come from the same country we do, or who share our faith, then we misunderstand what empathy is.
George W. Bush: a person who is the ultimate outcome of the American condition. Someone promoted above ability because of circumstance and organisation and empathy. You don't have to be intelligent. A moron in a hurry could know that you don't prevent war by having a war.
Empathy has some unfortunate features - it is parochial, narrow-minded, and innumerate. We're often at our best when we're smart enough not to rely on it.
Because a human being is endowed with empathy, he violates the natural order if he does not reach out to those who need care. Responding to this empathy, one is in harmony with the order of things, with dharma; otherwise, one is not.
I'm a fan of Oliver Stone. I like his movies, I like his excess, and I think he has a great capacity for empathy and it comes out more powerfully in this movie than in any of his other films, even the formal 'I'm identifying with the underdog' movies like 'Born on the Fourth of July.'
In a high-IQ job pool, soft skills like discipline, drive and empathy mark those who emerge as outstanding.
Posh people blow my mind. Apart from empathy, they're good at everything - true survivalists.
This precious thing of empathy and love and understanding is something we have to hold and appreciate and protect.
A prerequisite to empathy is simply paying attention to the person in pain.
Everybody wants a robot that will do psychotherapy. But If you don't have empathy, you don't have psychotherapy. The robot doesn't know about life.
Empathy is what obsesses me. And watching empathy recede in the world is terrifying.
That's what happens in a good horror movie: there are always metaphors of greater subjects like humanity and empathy and compassion. It's not about the action and scary moments: You really care about these characters because they're mirrors of our own reflections.
A more courageous empathy is needed in our country to see the struggles of people from factory towns to farm towns to city towns who can't even afford the rent in their cities anymore because costs are going so high.
It's hard to penetrate characters who are very cut off and lack empathy and to do it with sympathy. It's so easy to make a damaged character repugnant.
I remember, once I was stressed, with an upcoming paper deadline. That little Microsoft Word clippy guy would show up in my face, jumping around and asking if I needed help. It had no understanding of my emotions and had zero empathy. That got me interested in this idea of tech being responsive to our emotions.
