Paulo Coelho Quotes

When you're not involved, other people's unhappiness seems to be about the funniest damn thing on earth because you think you can solve it, that you are God, that you are above this, and that their unhappiness is just such useless toil and agony. If it's you, it ceases to be a comedy.

I'm not looking for sympathy at all.

People who know, know. The others, it really doesn't matter.

The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference.

Admiration is the emotion furthest from understanding. ~Sosuke Aizen

detachment, n. Even when I detach, I care. You can be separate from a thing and still care about it.

Nothing precludes sympathy so much as a perfect indifference to it

I have a lot of compassion for human beings in life experiences, so I allow myself to feel what these characters are feeling and don't have a problem accepting that.

We can empathize as deeply as we can empathize.

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

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.

How can you expect a man who's warm to understand one who's cold?

I get along with everybody because I don't believe anybody.

The thing that enchants me the most is the ability women have to feel other people's pain. The total empathy that women have is extraordinary.

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.

I find that in the 21st century, there's not a lot of compassion for what other people are going through or the walk that they have to walk.

I have no human feelings.

It is only after one is in trouble that one realizes how little sympathy and kindness there are in the world.

I felt along with her - not the physical pain, of course, but all her mental anguish. You can't be detached. She needed to have someone who understood what was happening in her mind.

Superior people never make long visits.

We must put ourselves in the place of those who are to hear us

People aren't very good at other people's pain.

It doesn't hurt to show some empathy.

The irony is that I'm actually a very empathetic person, but I don't believe in sympathy at all.

Ignorance and bungling with love are better than wisdom and skill without.