quotations about sympathy
One who can listen to our tale of grief,
And feel a pleasure, if he bring relief?
The face which spoke its sorrow and its pain
Then quickly learns to wear bright smiles again,
And gloomy shadows, brooding o'er the heart,
All fly, when Sympathy performs her part.
J. STRATTON
Fireside Poems
Human sympathy is a dear bargain. God waits outside till our company has gone.
DANIEL CONSIDINE
"God is Shy: Waiting and wanting in Advent", America: The Jesuit Review, December 3, 2015
We must laugh at man to avoid crying for him.
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE
The Table Talk and Opinions of Napoleon Bonaparte
To be without sympathy is to be alone in the world--without friends or country, home or kindred.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Though sympathy can't alter facts, it can help to make them more bearable.
BRAM STOKER
Dracula
Sympathy is a currency for losers.
MIKE FREEMAN
"As Rumors Swirl, the Browns' Pick at No. 1 Has NFL and Other Teams Concerned", Bleacher Report, April 14, 2017
Dislike is much easier to handle than sympathy.
AMIE KAUFMAN
These Broken Stars
SYMPATHY, akin to pity, may be styled one of the passions or deep feelings of the human heart, the inmost soul. Without sympathy we are without all that is Godlike in our nature, and more fit to be classed with "fiends" than with our fellow mortals. The heart that cannot be touched by the sight of human woe and suffering, must indeed be a hard heart. I should pick out as a truly courageous and brave man, and one likely to be foremost in any danger, he who could first shed the tear of sympathy for a brother or sister in distress. A hard heart is never really a brave heart. It is in the power of everyone to give sympathy in distress, if they cannot give assistance. A kind word to one in distress is like helping to hold up a falling heart, or like a push behind when going up a steep hill. The beasts of the field, and the birds of the air, often feel deep sympathy for one another when in pain or suffering. I have seen it made apparent in many ways. Then remembering your immortal and never-dying souls, and Christ's great sympathy for you, be not worse than the beasts of the earth, but sympathise one with the other when in pain, mental or bodily.
T. AUGUSTUS FORBES LEITH
"On Sympathy", Short Essays
If your heart is filled with human sympathy you are sure to have friends.
LEWIS F. KORNS
Thoughts
Who can tell what metals the gods use in forging the subtle bond which we call sympathy, which we might as well call love.
KATE CHOPIN
The Awakening
So far as the sympathy alone is concerned, I perceive only that something in another which is like myself in my own experience.... We may say that the instant I sympathize I become the other, yet only the other so far as I perceive it to be myself. I appear for a moment to be losing my identity in sympathizing, yet as a matter of fact I am asserting it in the strongest terms.
JOSEPH WILLIAM LESTER JONES
Sociality and Sympathy: An Introduction to the Ethics
Like the sea-anemone, which feels the first returning wave upon the rock, and throws out all its tendrils, so the tender nature of some individuals will give forth all its sympathies at the slightest intimations of woe.
JOHN EVERETT
The Bible Class Magazine, Volume 8
Sympathy is as lightning; it is quick as thought; it waits not to make its selections; it is irrespective of considerations, and of partialities, and of tastes, and of cold prudence.
ISAAC TAYLOR
attributed, Day's Collacon
When we fully understand the brevity of life, its fleeting joys and unavoidable pains; when we accept the facts that all men and women are approaching an inevitable doom: the consciousness of it should make us more kindly and considerate of each other. This feeling should make men and women use their best efforts to help their fellow travelers on the road, to make the path brighter and easier as we journey on. It should bring a closer kinship, a better understanding, and a deeper sympathy for the wayfarers who must live a common life and die a common death.
CLARENCE DARROW
The Essential Writings of Clarence Darrow
Sympathy is an irreducible phenomenon, an actualization of being which can only be clarified metaphysically.
A. R. LUTHER
Persons in Love: A Study of Max Scheler's Wesen und Formen der Sympathie
Of a truth, men are mystically united: a mystic bond of brotherhood makes all men one.
THOMAS CARLYLE
Essays
Sympathy is often not enough. It can be condescending. But taking on the identity of others, appropriating what is theirs, is invasive and frequently violent. I have heard appropriation defended on the grounds that we have a responsibility to tell one another's stories and must be free to do so. This is a seductive but flawed argument. The responsibility toward other people's stories is real and inescapable, but that doesn't mean that appropriation is the way to satisfy that responsibility. In fact, the opposite is true: Telling the stories in which we are complicit outsiders has to be done with imagination and skepticism. It might require us not to give up our freedom, but to prioritize justice over freedom. It is not about taking something that belongs to someone else and making it serve you but rather about recognizing that history is brutal and unfinished and finding some way, within that recognition, to serve the dispossessed.
TEJU COLE
"Getting Others Right", New York Times Magazine, June 13, 2017
For I no sooner in my heart divin'd,
My heart, which by a secret harmony
Still moves with thine, joined in connection sweet.
JOHN MILTON
Paradise Lost
There are some men and women whose sympathies for others' pains are as quick as the consciousness of their own; who feel a personal relief from suffering when others are relieved; and to whose ear the song of the captive ransomed from guilt is sweeter than a thousand-voiced chorus, pealing their own praises. These are the god-like.
HORACE MANN
Thoughts
Pity and need
Make all flesh kin. There is no caste in blood.
EDWIN ARNOLD
Light of Asia