quotations about sympathy
Though sympathy can't alter facts, it can help to make them more bearable.
BRAM STOKER
Dracula
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
Never elated while one man's oppress'd;
Never dejected while another's blessed.
ALEXANDER POPE
An Essay on Man
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
If your heart is filled with human sympathy you are sure to have friends.
LEWIS F. KORNS
Thoughts
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
The greatest pleasures of which the human mind is susceptible are the pleasures of consciousness and sympathy.
WILLIAM GODWIN
The Enquirer
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
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
Of a truth, men are mystically united: a mystic bond of brotherhood makes all men one.
THOMAS CARLYLE
Essays
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
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
Sympathy is bliss; in it is revealed the highest, purest blessedness. It is divine, for in its reciprocal light all thought of self is lost, and there remains only the pure joy of oneness with others.
JAMES ALLEN
Byways to Blessedness
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
The man who melts
With social sympathy, though not allied,
Is of more worth than a thousand kinsmen.
EURIPIDES
Orestes
Sympathy is value perception, but simultaneously, a living with, a participation in the life lived by a man seen as a value. This participation is an event within Being which reveals a level or mode of being. The openness involved not only reveals a deeper level of being in the one opening towards the other, but also reveals the other man in his unique and valued being.
A. R. LUTHER
Persons in Love: A Study of Max Scheler's Wesen und Formen der Sympathie
One advantage gained by calamities, is to know how to sympathize with others in the like troubles.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
The secrets of life are not shown except to sympathy and likeness.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Representative Men
He watch'd and wept, he pray'd and felt for all.
OLIVER GOLDSMITH
The Deserted Village
Sympathy is when you feel sorry for someone. Compassion is when you do something about it.
JONAH GOLDBERG
"The Dangers of Empathy", National Review, May 5, 2017