quotations about 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
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
To be without sympathy is to be alone in the world--without friends or country, home or kindred.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
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
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 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
The man who melts
With social sympathy, though not allied,
Is of more worth than a thousand kinsmen.
EURIPIDES
Orestes
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
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
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
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
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
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
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"
Of a truth, men are mystically united: a mystic bond of brotherhood makes all men one.
THOMAS CARLYLE
Essays
One advantage gained by calamities, is to know how to sympathize with others in the like troubles.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine