Skip to content
quotesby

About this quote

What does it mean?
Kindness requires imagining how others feel as if it were your own experience.
In plain terms
To be kind, imagine others pain and joy as your own.
What can you take from it?
Empathy is the foundation of true kindness.

Where it applies

  • conflict resolution
  • friendship
  • caregiving

Putting it to work

  • practice perspective taking
  • listen deeply
  • act on feelings

Questions to consider

  • Whose feelings have you ignored?
  • How would you feel in their place?

Another view

Empathy can be exhausting or biased toward some people.

More from Andre Gide

  1. What another would have done as well as you, do not do it. What another would have said as well as you, do not say it; what another would have written as well,…

    Permalink to quote #3
  2. Le peche, c'est ce qui obscurcit l'ame.

    Permalink to quote #5
  3. ' Nathaniel, let every emotion be capable becoming an intoxication to you. If what you eat fails to make you drunk, it is because you are not hungry enough.'

    Permalink to quote #2

Related quotes

  1. 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 th…

    George WashingtonGeorge Washington quote #84
  2. Of all the Griefs that harrass the Distrest, Sure the most bitter is a scornful Jest

    Samuel JohnsonSamuel Johnson quote #1
  3. What sorrow was, thou bad'st her know, And from her own she learned to melt at others' woe.

    Thomas GrayThomas Gray quote #2