Tobias Wolff Quotes

Walk a mile in my shoes is good advice. Our children will learn to respect others if they are used to imagining themselves in another's place.

Perchance that I might learn what pity is, That I might laugh at erring men no more.

Anything that makes it easier to imagine trading places with someone else increases your moral consideration for that other person.

One of the greatest indicators of our own spiritual maturity is revealed in how we respond to the weaknesses, the inexperience, and the potentially offensive actions of others.

I always think you have to show a degree of humanity and sensitivity when you're dealing with people in extreme circumstances.

My mother always taught me to think about things from other people's perspectives and think about where they're coming from.

If you can understand, you can feel compassion.

How can you build something for someone else if you don't have enough familiarity with them to imagine the world through their eyes?

To be empathetic to everyone around you, I think, is such a powerful thing to hold.

I've become more empathetic, and my capacity to understand and be patient - to give people a break - has enlarged over the years.

A man of understanding, a man who understands himself and others, always feels compassion. Even if somebody is an enemy you have compassion toward him because a man of understanding can understand the viewpoint of the other also. He knows why the other feels as he feels, he knows why the other is angry, because he knows his own self, and in knowing that, he has known all others.

Vanity calculates but poorly on the vanity of others; what a virtue we should distil from frailty, what a world of pain we should save our brethren, if we would suffer our own weakness to be the measure of theirs.

I believe in being compassionate.

We should strive to understand the weakness of others.

Everyone deserves compassion.

Personally, I think humility is a prerequisite to being a truly empathic person.

It's good to have to put yourself in someone else's skin. It's all-consuming.

You shall find out how salt is the taste of another man's bread, and how hard is the way up and down another man's stairs.

To put yourself in another's place requires real imagination, but by doing so each Girl Scout will be able to love among others happily.

Well, I think that if you sincerely try to imagine what life is like for another person - not in a mocking way, not in a satirical way, but in a sincere, compassionate way - I don't think that's exploitive.

People need to be more aware of how they're affecting people.

I have begun to sympathetically understand Paul, though I don't like him much.

How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in your life you will have been all of these.

You just need to put yourself in someone else's shoes and then see how they feel and then you will understand why they are reacting or why they are behaving the way that they are behaving. We need to be fair.

I don't have many deal breakers. I've done so much in my life, it doesn't feel right to judge other people.