quotations about 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
The tear of sympathy never falls in vain; it waters and fertilizes the soil of the most sterile heart and causes it to flourish with the beautiful flowers of gratitude and love.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust
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
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
I ask Thee for a thankful love,
Through constant watching wise,
To meet the glad with joyful smiles,
And to wipe the weeping eyes,
And a heart at leisure from itself,
To soothe and sympathize.
ANNA LAETITIA WARING
Father I know that all my Life: Hymns and Meditations
Sympathy is an openness in which the sorrow or joy lived by another is immediately and directly perceivable and meaningful in and through the body. The fact that the life lived by another is immediately and directly perceivable in his body does not mean that sympathy is caused by the mere encounter with another or that sympathy is the result of empirical observation. Sympathy is not called forth as the conclusion of a reasoning process which could be decided one way or another. Concretely, sympathy indicates a change of disposition or heart. This change is spontaneous and creative. Sympathy is a function which opens a man towards another man as this man living this life.
A. R. LUTHER
Persons in Love: A Study of Max Scheler's Wesen und Formen der Sympathie
Long night's strain,
Teach us change,
From fear.
I live to see the sympathy
That lives inside of you.
TONIC
"Where Do I Fit"
The secrets of life are not shown except to sympathy and likeness.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Representative Men
O Sympathy, thy marvellous power to heal
We may not in life's vernal period feel;
Then joys abound, and mantling in the breast
Hope reigns, and lends to life unfailing zest.
J. STRATTON
Fireside Poems
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
It is the perfume of such sweet and noble human sympathy that makes this wild beasts' cage a world habitable for men.
FRANK HARRIS
Oscar Wilde
Sympathy wanting, all is wanting; its personal magnetism is the conductor of the sacred spark that lights our atoms, puts us in human communion, and gives us to company, conversation, and ourselves.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT
Tablets
I walk with a purpose. And a limp. (The limp helps serve my purpose, which is to gain sympathy.)
JAROD KINTZ
99 Cents for Some Nonsense
Once you take the time to consider the other person's perspective, you will become sympathetic to his feelings and ideas. You will be able to authentically and honestly say, "I don't blame you for feeling as you do. If I were in your position, I would feel just as you do."
DALE CARNEGIE
How to Win Friends and Influence People
A sympathizing heart is a spring of pure water bursting forth from the mountainside; ever pure and sweet in itself, it carries gladness and joy on every ripple of its sparkling current.
WILLIS GIEST
"The Tear of Sympathy", The Mourner's Friend; Or, Sighs of Sympathy for Those who Sorrow
A kind, sympathizing word from the lips falls like oil upon the ruffled waters of the human breast.
NICIAS BALLARD COOKSEY
Helps to Happiness
Sophistic closures of maze inphiltrate
With dove inter-cooings as if to a mate--
Sympathy--sympathy.
GERDA DALLIBA
"Sympathy", An Earth Poem and Other Poems
A look of love, a word of kindness, a tear of sympathy, costs us nothing. Why, then, withhold them from those who would prize them as blessings winged with the fragrant dews of heaven?
WILLIS GIEST
"The Tear of Sympathy", The Mourner's Friend; Or, Sighs of Sympathy for Those who Sorrow
I know you want me to feel some sympathy for them, but that's not who I am. I care only about those I know, and even then, not all that deeply. Strangers get nothing from me.
RACHEL CAINE
Lord of Misrule
Even a witch wants sympathy.
FRANNY BILLINGSLEY
Chime