quotations about sympathy
Sympathy is spontaneous. It is a direct function of my consciousness of kind, the recognition of my most fundamental self in another.
JOSEPH WILLIAM LESTER JONES
Sociality and Sympathy: An Introduction to the Ethics
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
Yet, taught by time, my heart has learned to glow
For other's good, and melt at other's woe.
HOMER
The Odyssey
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
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
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
The man who melts
With social sympathy, though not allied,
Is of more worth than a thousand kinsmen.
EURIPIDES
Orestes
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
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
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
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
If your heart is filled with human sympathy you are sure to have friends.
LEWIS F. KORNS
Thoughts
Never elated while one man's oppress'd;
Never dejected while another's blessed.
ALEXANDER POPE
An Essay on Man
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"
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
Sympathy just doesn't mean
That much to me
Compassion's not
The fashion in my mind
And if you're looking for
A shoulder to cry on
Don't turn your head my way
'Cause I'd rather have
My music any day
URIAH HEEP
"Sympathy"
How softly the tear of sympathy falls on the heart bruised and broken with sorrow! It assures the sad and weeping soul that it is not alone in a wilderness of cold hearts; that there are those who can feel for the troubles of others; and oh! what is more cheering to an aching heart than such a thought?
WILLIS GIEST
"The Tear of Sympathy", The Mourner's Friend; Or, Sighs of Sympathy for Those who Sorrow
The greatest pleasures of which the human mind is susceptible are the pleasures of consciousness and sympathy.
WILLIAM GODWIN
The Enquirer