quotations about sympathy
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
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
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
He watch'd and wept, he pray'd and felt for all.
OLIVER GOLDSMITH
The Deserted Village
Never elated while one man's oppress'd;
Never dejected while another's blessed.
ALEXANDER POPE
An Essay on Man
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
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 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
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
Though sympathy can't alter facts, it can help to make them more bearable.
BRAM STOKER
Dracula
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
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
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
Of a truth, men are mystically united: a mystic bond of brotherhood makes all men one.
THOMAS CARLYLE
Essays
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
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
The secrets of life are not shown except to sympathy and likeness.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Representative Men
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"
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