How many times have you thought to yourself, “I wish I knew what they were going through that time. I would have treated them differently”? So many times, right?
To help you end such regrets, I bring you the best “You never know what someone is going through quotes” to challenge, motivate, and remind you to step back and really put yourself in other people’s shoes so you can realize the best course of action.
Let’s go!
You Never Know What Someone Is Going Through By Looks
Many people out there are putting on a brave face. They don’t publicly wallow in their suffering because it doesn’t help – it doesn’t get work done.
Some are battling a mental illness and still have to hold on to their tasking duties, others show up at work even if their family member just died because they’ve got bills to pay, and that waiter you think is clumsy might have just received terrifying news of a tumor growing in their brain.
So if you see someone looking unruly, sad, absentminded, or anything you find inconvenient, remember that you never know what someone is going through with these quotes:
- Never mock anyone for their unkempt looks, for you never know what times someone is going through
- Do not judge by appearances; a rich heart may be under a poor coat
- Judgments prevent us from seeing the good that lies beyond appearances. – Wayne Dyer
- Do not judge appearances because you never know what someone is going through
- Have compassion and empathy in your heart. Many people are suffering deep emotional anguish beneath the surface of their lives, and smile even as they hurt inside. – Jim Palmer
- You think that person doesn’t have anything going bad for them because they’re rich, beautiful, and smiling? Think again. No matter what you see externally, you never know what someone is going through internally
- Never look down on anybody unless you’re helping him up. – Jesse Jackson
- There’s a reason why those eyes express sadness, be kind, you never know what someone is going through
- Sometimes kindly asking why someone looks sad or stressed or lost can change a life
- Sometimes a good person is hidden under a negative armor, be kind
- Lots of brave hearts walk around with smiles and confidence but you never know the tough times they’re going through
- Other human beings feel sad and walk around in their business just as you do so show compassion
- Many human beings suffer in silence so stay kind, you never know what someone is going through
Why Empathy Is So Important – The Power Of Knowing What Someone Is Going Through
Here are quotes to help you know what empathy means in everyday life, what it’s not, and how fundamental it is to good relationships.
- Empathy depends not only on one’s ability to identify someone else’s emotions but also on one’s capacity to put oneself in the other person’s place and to experience an appropriate emotional response. – Charles G. Morris.
- Empathy means both understanding others on their own terms and bringing them within the orbit of one’s own experience. – Jacob A. Belzen
- Empathy is simply listening, holding space, withholding judgment, emotionally connecting, and communicating that incredibly healing message of you’re not alone. – Brene Brown
- Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding. – Albert Einstein.
- You never know what someone is going through, but you can choose to learn through empathy and act accordingly
- Empathy is one of humankind’s prized possessions. Acts of consideration and kindness are inevitable when a person can mentally step into someone else’s shoes. Even if it’s just for a moment. – Izey Victoria Odiase
- Exposure promotes understanding, understanding promotes empathy, and empathy promotes compromise. – F. Allen Davis
- If you share in a heartfelt sorrow, you can lighten the load of a friend. Sometimes facing the burden together can mend two broken hearts in the end. – Wes Fessler
- Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around. – Leo Buscaglia
- Nothing is more important than empathy for another human being’s suffering. Nothing. Not career, not wealth, not intelligence, certainly not status. We have to feel for one another if we’re going to survive with dignity. – Audrey Hepburn
- Empathy is the gateway; compassion is the way. – Scott Perry
- Leadership is about empathy. It is about having the ability to relate to and connect with people for the purpose of inspiring and empowering their lives. – Oprah Winfrey
- Empathy is a respectful understanding of what others are experiencing. Instead of offering empathy, we often have a strong urge to give advice or reassurance and to explain our own position or feeling. Empathy, however, calls upon us to empty our mind and listen to others with our whole being. – Marshall B. Rosenberg
- Empathy comes from the Greek empatheia – em (into) and pathos (feeling) – a penetration, a kind of travel. It suggests you enter another person’s pain as you’d enter another country, through immigration and customs, border crossing by way of query: What grows where you are? What are the laws? What animals graze there? – Leslie Jamison
Related: The Gift Of Empathy Is A Blessing
Don’t Criticize People You Don’t Know Well Kindness Quotes
It could be that chubby friend you wish could get hold of their diet, that pregnant teen you see at the mall who you think is wasting her life, or just any person you barely know.
The thing is, that chubby friend never told you how they got there and what they’re already doing about the extra weight. That pregnant teen might have been on the street since her parents passed away and had no one to take care of them – maybe they just got their life together with the help of a stranger.
You truly never know what someone has gone through if you don’t know their side of the story so having a strong opinion about something you barely know about would not only keep you in the dark but also hurt a person in case you treat them harshly.
Here are some quotes to challenge you to consider your opinion of people you don’t know well:
- Stop criticizing what you know little about. It’s better to be kind and learn what someone is going through than to be harsh and later realize your ignorance.
- Seek to understand people first before criticizing them. Seek to build people instead of destroying them.
- Mercy triumphs over judgment so if you want to change the world let alone change a life, be kind.
- Before you conclude fault in someone, make sure you’ve known them really well for no one wears their true stories on their sleeves.
- A nice person isn’t perfect so before you conclude, get to know someone – you never know what someone is going through
- Everyone may not be good, but there’s always something good in everyone. Never judge anyone shortly because every saint has a past and every sinner has a future. – Oscar Wilde.
- Before you judge someone, walk a mile in their shoes – Eminem
- You have an experience too limited to judge anyone rightly
- You don’t have to help everyone but you can kindly walk away
- The world is made up of diverse people so no one can judge by their own standards
- Don’t judge a man by where he is because you don’t know how far he has come – C.S Lewis
- Be kind for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. – Plato
- Whether it is rational or empirical, your approach to life must always be empathetic. Emotional intelligence is acquired when knowledge and empathy are combined and applied to situations regularly in everyday life. – Stewart Stafford
Kindness Can Help You Suffer Less
Kindness is good for your physical and mental health. It increases your optimism, can boost your productivity, and also fuels more kindness in yourself and others for a ripple positive effect.
- The most important thing is that we need to be understood. We need someone to be able to listen to us and to understand us. Then we will suffer less. – Nhat Hanh
- Learning to stand in somebody else’s shoes, to see through their eyes, that’s how peace begins. And it’s up to you to make that happen. Empathy is a quality of character that can change the world. — Barack Obama.
- Judging is preventing us from understanding a new truth. Free yourself from the rules of old judgments and create the space for new understanding. — Steve Maraboli
- If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion. – Dalai Lama.
- Your life becomes more peaceful when you stop judging others.
- The only way to change someone’s mind is to connect with them from the heart. – Rasheed Ogunlaru
- The less you judge, the happier you become
- When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares. – Henri Nouwen
- We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer. – Dietrich Bonhoeffer
- When you judge another, you do not define them, you define yourself. – Earl Nightingale
- Resolve to be tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant of the weak and the wrong. Sometime in life you will have been all of these. – George Washington Carver
- Practicing kindness increases our ability to be empathetic. It helps keep our hearts open. And that, truly, is the best way to live. – Kristi Bowman
- Sometimes all a person wants is an empathetic ear; all he or she needs is to talk it out. Just offering a listening ear and an understanding heart for his or her suffering can be a big comfort. – Roy T. Bennett
- When you show deep empathy toward others, their defensive energy goes down, and positive energy replaces it. That’s when you can get more creative in solving problems. – Stephen Covey
- No one reaches out to you for compassion or empathy so you can teach them how to behave better. They reach out to us because they believe in our capacity to know our darkness well enough to sit in the dark with them. – Brene Brown
- If you can’t help someone, at least don’t make them suffer more.
- To the extent that our experience of suffering reminds us of what everyone else also endures, it serves as a powerful inspiration to practice compassion and avoid causing others pain. And to the extent that suffering awakens our empathy and causes us to connect with others, it serves as the basis of compassion and love. – Dalai Lama
Related: Empathetic Mindset – Important Traits
More You Never Know What Someone Is Going Through Quotes
- Hard times are for everyone. Therefore, be like a balm to hurt people on their bad days and be like a tough nut on the hard days of your own life.
- Empathy is a connection; it’s a ladder out of the shame hole. – Brene Brown
- Some people are carrying a heavy load on their shoulders and the only person who could make it lighter could be you – by showing compassion
- Treat others the same way you want to be treated for you never know what someone is going through
- A simple “good morning” could completely change someone’s mood for the better. Keep being kind.
- Bad things happen to kind people too so be kind to anyone having a tough time
- The world needs more kind people to turn the so-called bad people into grateful people
- Be kind not just to your loved one or co-worker but also to strangers, you never know whose life you’re going to change
- Forget not when someone was unkind to you and resolve to never make someone feel as horrible as you did
- We all get caught up in our own lives because it’s the first place to get things right but let’s not forget kindness to make the world a better place
- Maybe they’ve been struggling with an eating disorder from a young age, maybe that clumsy mom you met at the airport was just evicted with her three children, perhaps your neighbor sent you the noise complaint not because they’re a bad person but because they have clinical misophonia – you never know what someone is going through
- In the same way, you wouldn’t want someone judging you when they hear you talking on a bad day, give others the benefit of doubt because you don’t know what’s happening in their lives
- Most people are going through something tough so always strive to be a source of hope
Wrapping Up
Dalai Lama, Oprah Winfrey, Mahatma Gandhi, Barrack Obama, and many other iconic thinkers have taught us from their experiences that you never really know what people are going through. And that the only way to live happily and spread the same happiness to others is to practice kindness through empathy.
So with the above quotes in mind, I hope you stay kind and change the world, one moment at a time.
Share this post with your friends so they too can spread kindness.
After all, you never know what someone is going through.
