SYMPATHY QUOTES III

quotations about sympathy

To weep and lament over misfortunes, when it draws the sympathizing tear, brings no light recompense.

AESCHYLUS

attributed, Day's Collacon


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

Tags: Kate Chopin


If your heart is filled with human sympathy you are sure to have friends.

LEWIS F. KORNS

Thoughts

Tags: Lewis F. Korns


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


Sympathy is a fellow-feeling with any in trouble; it can only be fully developed where like experience exists.

A. RITCHIE

attributed, Day's Collacon


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


It is said that the wounded deer sheds tears; but it belongs to man only, to "weep with them that weep," and by sympathy to divide another's sorrows, and double another's joys.

THOMAS GUTHRIE

Gems of Illustration from the Sermons and Other Writings of Thomas Guthrie


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

Tags: Thomas Mann


The secrets of life are not shown except to sympathy and likeness.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON

Representative Men

Tags: Ralph Waldo Emerson


For if sympathy is seen as an aspect of human intelligence, derived from an emotional experience, which is in turn based on evaluating and appraising objects, one can deduce that it is a state which can be changed, developed, augmented, or manipulated.

SOPHIE RATCLIFFE

On Sympathy


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

Tags: Thomas Carlyle


One advantage gained by calamities, is to know how to sympathize with others in the like troubles.

WELLINS CALCOTT

Thoughts Moral and Divine

Tags: Wellins Calcott


The greatest pleasures of which the human mind is susceptible are the pleasures of consciousness and sympathy.

WILLIAM GODWIN

The Enquirer

Tags: William Godwin


The man who melts
With social sympathy, though not allied,
Is of more worth than a thousand kinsmen.

EURIPIDES

Orestes

Tags: Euripides


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


Trade in all our words for tea and sympathy
Wonder why we tried for things that could never be
Play our hearts lament like an unrehearsed symphony

JARS OF CLAY

"Tea and Sympathy"


Our souls sit close and silently within,
And their own web from their own entrails spin;
And when eyes meet far off, our sense is such,
That, spider like, we feel the tenderest touch.

JOHN DRYDEN

Mariage à la Mode

Tags: John Dryden


There is poetry and there is beauty in real sympathy; but there is more -- there is action. The noblest and most powerful form of sympathy is not merely the responsive tear, the echoed sigh, the answering look; it is the embodiment of the sentiment in actual help.

OCTAVIUS WINSLOW

attributed, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers


He watch'd and wept, he pray'd and felt for all.

OLIVER GOLDSMITH

The Deserted Village

Tags: Oliver Goldsmith