quotations about sympathy
Strengthen me by sympathizing with my strength not my weakness.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT
Table Talk
Sympathy is not a quality merely needed in adversity. It is needed as much when the sun shines.
HUGH BLACK
Friendship
The mystery of sympathy links us with kindred minds, and bids us feel long before the lights and shadows of character can be distinguished, that we have met with the rich blessing of a heart which can understand us, and on which our own can lean.
MRS. J. M. PARKER
attributed, Day's Collacon
To sympathise with another is to receive his being into our own, to become one with him, for unselfish love indissolubly unites, and he whose sympathy reaches out to and embraces all humankind and all living creatures has realised his identity and oneness with all, and comprehends the universal Love and Law and Wisdom.
JAMES ALLEN
Byways to Blessedness
Selective sympathy is a real and dangerous problem because it means that we may avoid investing passion and attention in issues that could really use our help.
AVA AMIEN
"Glenn Rhee is Killed but Selective Sympathy is Alive and Well", Blasting News, October 28, 2016
Sympathy is underwritten by love.
MAX FERDINAND SCHELER
The Nature of Sympathy
Give heed, give heed and give your sympathy
To one who suffers; sorrow roaming wide
Impartial stops and stays awhile with me,
To tarry later seated close by thee.
AESCHYLUS
Prometheus Bound
The capacity of sorrow belongs to our grandeur, and the loftiest of our race are those who have had the profoundest sympathies, because they have had the profoundest sorrows.
HENRY GILES
attributed, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers
Sympathy cares not,
Nor wants not.
I cannot shed your tears.
BRUTAL TRUTH
"Sympathy Kiss"
I don't need your sympathy, unless it comes in the form of a check or cash. I also accept money orders.
JAROD KINTZ
This Book is Not For Sale
Graceful, particularly in youth, is the tear of sympathy, and the heart that melts at the tale of woe.
H. BLAIR
attributed, Day's Collacon
They might as well lick each other's wounds. But they would lick forever, and the wounds would never heal, and in the end their tongues would be worn away.
KOBO ABE
The Woman in the Dunes
Sympathy is two hearts tugging at one load.
CHARLES H. PARKHURST
"The Good Samaritan", The Pattern in the Mount and Other Sermons
There's nothing like your mother's sympathetic voice to make you want to burst into tears.
SOPHIE KINSELLA
Confessions of a Shopaholic
One of the greatest of all mental pleasures is to have our thoughts often divined, ever entered into with sympathy.
MISS L. E. LANDON
attributed, Day's Collacon
Sympathy is a currency, and I'm shaking a cup!
ISAAC OLIVER
attributed, "My Most Memorable Cultural Moments of 2016", The New Yorker, December 7, 2016
Surely, surely the only one true knowledge of our fellow man is that which enables us to feel with him--which gives us a fine ear for the heart-pulses that are beating under the mere clothes of circumstance and opinion.
GEORGE ELIOT
Janet's Repentance
There is in souls a sympathy with sounds,
And as the mind is pitch'd the ear is pleased
With melting airs, or martial, brisk or grave;
Some chord in unison with what we hear
Is touch'd within us, and the heart replies.
WILLIAM COWPER
"The Winter Walk at Noon", The Task
We pine for kindred natures
To mingle with our own.
FELICIA HEMANS
Psyche borne by Zephyrs to the Island of Pleasure
Ah! then for Sympathy our spirit sighs,
And all her comforts we can truly prize;
Compared with her, how poor is gift of gold,
Though counted for us in a heap untold!
J. STRATTON
Fireside Poems