W. H. Auden Quotes

It's one of the ironies of human nature that the most sensitive people are generally insensitive to the feelings of others.

I was fifteen years old when I understood how it is that things break down: people can't imagine someone else's point of view.

The more that we self-analyze ourselves, the nicer we are to people and to ourselves, and the more we understand each other.

One way to overcome our natural self-centeredness is to try to see things from other people's perspectives.

I think that if we don't learn to inhabit other people's perspectives, then we're never going to understand why people do what they do.

People just tell me I'm supposed to be sensitive, and I'm not. But I think I'm very emotional. I'm very caring.

Much of the insensibility and hardness of the world is due to the lack of imagination which prevents a realization of the experiences of other people.

Intelligent people know others. Enlightened people know themselves.

It's dangerous to be people-blind.

You have to start knowing yourself so well that you begin to know other people. A piece of us is in every person we can ever meet.

In many things it is not well to say, "Know thyself"; it is better to say, "Know others."

I'm sensitive, you know, about some things, and as some of my partners could attest to, incredibly insensitive.

I just think self-satisfied people ignore certain signs about other people.

We think empathy is innate, but it's not. It's a muscle you're working.

I think the more we know the better we are. I mean not just facts. The more we know about each other, the closer we are to learn something about our selves.

Some girl asked me for an autograph and I asked her why, she said because she admires me. I said she should see a shrink. Then she started crying and I started laughing.

Changing your attitude from self-centerdness to understanding requires desire and commitment to always try to see things from the other persons point of view.

Lack of sensitivity is perhaps basically an unawareness of ourselves.

People tell me it's a sin, to know and feel too much within.

We frequently are troublesome to others, when we think it impossible for us ever to be so.

I tell myself that I know you, and then when I think about it, I realize that I don't.

Can you step back from your own mind and thus understand all things?

There’s nothing to it. All you have to do is take a close look at yourself and you will understand everyone else. We’re in no way different ourselves... You show me someone who can’t understand people and I’ll show you someone who has built up a false image of himself.

I'm such an incredibly, stupidly sensitive person that everything that happens to me, I experience it really intensely. I feel everything very deeply. And when you feel things deeply and you think about things a lot and you think about how you feel, you learn a lot about yourself. And when you know yourself, you know life.

I think you gotta have an honesty and a humility about human nature and that it's not about you at the end of the day.