quotations about sympathy
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 beyond the confines of man, that is, humanity to the lower animals, seems to be one of the latest moral acquisitions.
CHARLES DARWIN
The Descent of Man
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
Never elated while one man's oppress'd;
Never dejected while another's blessed.
ALEXANDER POPE
An Essay on Man
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
Yet, taught by time, my heart has learned to glow
For other's good, and melt at other's woe.
HOMER
The Odyssey
A man's sympathy extends just so far as his wisdom reaches, and no further; and a man only grows wiser as he grows tenderer and more compassionate. To narrow one's sympathy is to narrow one's heart, and so to darken and embitter one's life.
JAMES ALLEN
Byways to Blessedness
He watch'd and wept, he pray'd and felt for all.
OLIVER GOLDSMITH
The Deserted Village
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
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 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"
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 greatest pleasures of which the human mind is susceptible are the pleasures of consciousness and sympathy.
WILLIAM GODWIN
The Enquirer
And sympathy is what we need my friends
'Cause there's not enough love to go 'round
BING CROSBY
"Sympathy"
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
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"
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
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