Quotes

Quotes about Sympathy


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.
How soft the music of those village bells
Falling at intervals upon the ear
In cadence sweet!

William Cowper

Our sympathy is cold to the relation of distant misery.

Edward Gibbon

True love's the gift which God has given
To man alone beneath the heaven:
It is not fantasy's hot fire,
Whose wishes soon as granted fly;
It liveth not in fierce desire,
With dead desire it doth not die;
It is the secret sympathy,
The silver link, the silken tie,
Which heart to heart and mind to mind
In body and in soul can bind.

Sir Walter Scott

No sympathy from me. No self-pity from you. That's our convenant

I have every sympathy with the American who was so horrified by what he had read about the effects of smoking that he gave up reading.

Henry G. Strauss

It is man's sympathy with all creatures that first makes him truly a man.

Albert Schweitzer

I have every sympathy with the American who was so horrified by what he had read about the effects of smoking that he gave up reading.

Henry G. Strauss

If a person is obviously mentally disabled, such as having Down's syndrome or Alzheimer's, decent people exercise sympathy and understanding in their interactions. So why, if someone merely has a low IQ, is he treated with ridicule and contempt?

Geoff Kuenning

The best cure for worry, depression, melancholy, brooding, is to go deliberately forth and try to lift with one's sympathy the gloom of somebody else.

Arnold Bennett

Women have no sympathy and my experience of women is almost as large as Europe.

Florence Nightingale

Autumn wins you best by this, its mute Appeal to sympathy for its decay.

Robert Browning

They mustn't know my despair, I can't let them see the wounds which they have caused, I couldn't bear their sympathy and their kind-hearted jokes, it would only make me want to scream all the more. If I talk, everyone thinks I'm showing off; when I'm silent they think I'm ridiculous; rude if I answer, sly if I get a good idea, lazy if I'm tired, selfish if I eat a mouthful more than I should, stupid, cowardly, crafty, etc. etc.

Anne Frank

Feast of John, Apostle & Evangelist In several striking cases of conversion I have studied, those in need were inspired and affected, not merely by the kindness of an individual... but by the love and sympathy of the Church as a whole... Examples could be multiplied. This type of service is a great witness to the reality of Christian life and faith; but it presupposes a spirit of fellowship within the Church, a spirit which is all too rare. It means that there is mutual respect and trust between the minister and the members of his Church; and a spirit of fellowship which is outward-looking and which issues in service.

Owen Brandon

Commemoration of Francis Xavier, Apostle of the Indies, Missionary, 1552 We see him exalting love for neighbor along with love for God. He reaches out to foreigners who are beyond the borders of the "Israel of God". He seeks the release of captives, prisoners, and slaves. He denounces the scribes and religious leaders who "devour the houses of widows". Despite his well-known requirement of loyalty that surpasses family ties, he insists that a man put the care of his own parents ahead of his obligations to his religion. His treatment of women is radically opposed to the strictures of that day. He exhibits sympathy and understanding toward children. He operates an out-patient clinic wherever he happens to be. He insists upon justice as the basis for everyday dealings between citizens. The social teaching of parables like "the good Samaritan" and incidents such as the encounter with the rich young ruler have had an effect upon his followers that cannot easily be measured. If one summary statement of Jesus' ethics can be made, it is that love of God is best shown by love of fellow men.

Sherwood Eliot Wirt

It is a man's sympathy with all creatures that truly makes him a man. Until he extends his circle of compassion to all living things, man himself will not find peace.

Albert Schweitzer

Or, if there were a sympathy in choice, War, death, or sickness did lay siege to it, Making it momentany as a sound, Swift as a shadow, short as any dream, Brief as the lightning in the collied night, That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth, And ere a man hath power to say 'Behold!' The jaws of darkness do devour it up: So quick bright things come to confusion.

William Shakespeare

The best cure for worry, depression, melancholy, brooding, is to go deliberately forth and try to lift with one's sympathy the gloom of somebody else.

Arnold Bennett

No one has yet realized the wealth of sympathy, the kindness and generosity hidden in the soul of a child. The effort of every true education should be to unlock that treasure.

Emma Goldman

It is in our faults and failings, not in our virtues, that we touch each other, and find sympathy. . . . It is in our follies that we are one.

Jerome K. Jerome

If we would build on a sure foundation in friendship, we must love friends for their sake rather than for our own. •Charlotte Bronte A true friend is someone who thinks that you are a good egg even though he knows that you are slightly cracked. •Bernard Meltzer True friendship is a plant of slow growth, and must undergo the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation. •George Washington Friends are born, not made. •Henry Adams Love is blind; friendship closes its eyes. •Anonymous Friendship is a single soul dwelling in two bodies. •Aristotle A friend loveth at all times. •Bible, Proverbs 17:17 Friendship often ends in love; but love in friendship-never. •Charles Caleb Colton A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature. •Ralph Waldo Emerson It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them •Ralph Waldo Emerson The only way to have a friend is to be one. •Ralph Waldo Emerson Real friendship is shown in times of trouble; prosperity is full of friends. •Euripides It is in the thirties that we want friends. In the forties we know they won't save us any more than love did. •F Scott Fitzgerald We do not regret the loss of our friends by reasons of their merit, but because of our needs and for the good opinion that we believed them to have held of us. •François Duc de La Rochefoucauld God gives us our relatives- thank God we can choose our friends. •Ethel Watts Mumford Love demands infinitely less than friendship. •George Jean Nathan Women can form a friendship with a man very well; but to preserve it-- to that end a slight physical antipathy must probably help. •Friedrich Nietzsche Hold a true friend with both your hands. •Nigerian Proverb Friendship is constant in all other things save in the office and affairs of love. •William Shakespeare The mere process of growing old together will make the slightest acquaintance seem a bosom friend. •Logan Pearsall Smith A man cannot be said to succeed in this life who does not satisfy one friend. •Henry David Thoreau Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. •Bible, John 15:13 The proper office of a friend is to side with you when you are in the wrong. Nearly anybody will side with you when you are in the right. •Mark Twain Friendship is the marriage of the soul, and this marriage is liable to divorce. •Voltaire Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one. •Oscar Wilde Some people go to priests; others to poetry; I to my friends. •Virginia Woolf Chide a friend in private and praise him in public. •Solon Depend on no man, on no friend, but him who can depend on himself. He only who acts conscientiously towards himself will act so towards others, and vice versa. •Lavater Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another, What! You, too? I thought I was the only one. •C. S. Lewis If you want enemies, excel others; if you want friends let others excel you. •Colton Old friends are best. King James used to call for his old shoes; they were easiest to his feet. •John Seldon There's not so much danger in a known foe than in a suspected friend. •Nabb To lose a friend is the greatest of all losses. •Syrus True friendship is like sound health, the value of it is seldom known until it be lost. •Charles Caleb Colton We cherish our friends not for their ability to amuse us, but for ours to amuse them. •Evelyn Waugh Who purposely cheats his friend, would cheat his God. •Lavater Friendship is like money, easier made than kept. •Samuel Butler A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him, I may think aloud. •Ralph Waldo Emerson, If all men knew what others say of them, there would not be four friends in the world. •Blaise Pascal I don't need a friend who changes when I change and who nods when I nod; my shadow does that much better. •Plutarch There is as much difference between the counsel that a friend giveth, and that a man giveth himself, as there is between counsel of a friend and a flatterer. •Francis Bacon Friends, if we be honest with ourselves, we shall be honest with each other. •George Macdonald A friend is, as it were, a second self. •Cicero Friendship is Love without his wings! •Byron To give counsel as well as to take it is a feature of true friendship. •Cicero Words are easy, like the wind; Faithful friends are hard to find. •Shakespeare That friendship will not continue to the end which is begun for an end. •Quarles He who has not the weakness of friendship has not the strength. •Joubert Every friend is to the other a sun, and a sunflower also. •Richter Our most intimate friend is not he to whom we show the worst, but the best of our nature. •Nathaniel Hawthorne The rule of friendship means there should be mutual sympathy between them, each supplying what the other lacks and trying to benefit the other, always using friendly and sincere words. •Buddha Friendship always benefits; love sometimes injures. •Seneca The mind is lowered through association with inferiors. With equals it attains equality; and with superiors, superiority. •The Hitopadesa Rare as is true love, true friendship is rarer. •La Fontaine The more we love our friends, the less we flatter them; is by excusing nothing that pure love shows itself. •Moliere One friend in a lifetime is much; two are many; three are hardly possible. Friendship needs a certain parallelism of life, a community of thought, a rivalry of aim. •Henry Brook Adams A friend in need is a friend to be avoided. •Lord Samuel While your friend holds you affectionately by both your hands you are safe, for you can watch both of his. •Anonymous Even the best of friends cannot attend each other's funeral. •Kehlog Albran The most I can do for my friend is simply be his friend. •Henry David Thoreau There are friendships to one who lives in society; thus our present grief arises from having friendships; observing the evils resulting from friendship, let one walk alone like a rhinoceros. •Buddha The best way to destroy your enemy is to make him your friend. •Abraham Lincoln If a man does not make new acquaintances, as he advances through life, he soon will find himself alone. A man should keep his friendship in constant repair. •Samuel Johnson You should never second-guess the motives of your true friends. You don't even have to analyze their actions because you know, at bottom, that whatever they do or say or think flows in some fundamental way from the fact that they love you. •Star Jones True friends visit us in prosperity only when invited, but in adversity they come without invitation. •Theophrastus True friendship is a plant of slow growth, and must undergo the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation. •George Washington But friendship is precious, not only in the shade, but in the sunshine of life; and thanks to a benevolent arrangement of things, the greater part of life is sunshine. •Thomas Jefferson True friendship brings sunshine to the shade, and shade to the sunshine

Charlotte Bronte

No one has yet fully realized the wealth of sympathy, kindness and generosity hidden in the soul of a child. The effort of every true education should be to unlock that treasure.

Emma Goldman

He who finds thought that lets us penetrate even a little deeper into the eternal mystery of nature has been granted great grace. He who, in addition, experiences the recognition, sympathy, and help of the best minds of his times, had been given almost more happiness than one man can bear.

William Cowper

Even here Thy strong magnetic charms I feel, And pant and tremble like the amorous steel. To lower good, and beauties less divine, Sometimes my erroneous needle does incline; But yet (so strong the sympathy) It turns, and points again to Thee.

John Norris of Bemerton

The secret of language is the secret of sympathy and its full charm is possible only to the gentle.

John Ruskin

There is first the literature of knowledge, and secondly, the literature of power. The function of the first is--to teach; the function of the second is--to move, the first is a rudder, the second an oar or a sail. The first speaks to the mere discursive understanding; the second speaks ultimately, it may happen, to the higher understanding or reason, but always through affections of pleasure and sympathy. - Thomas De Quincey ("The Opium Eater"),

Thomas De Quincey ("The Opium Eater")

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