Sympathy Quotes - Page 17

• Sweet souls around us watch us still, press nearer to our side; Into our thoughts, into our prayers, with gentle helpings glide.

  Harriet Beecher Stowe

  Inspirational, Sweet, Prayer

  Harriet Beecher Stowe (1867). “Religious Poems”, p.21

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• We often do more good by our sympathy than by our labors. A man may lose position, influence, wealth, and even health, and yet live on in comfort, if with resignation; but there is one thing without which life becomes a burden--that is human sympathy.

  Frederic Farrar

  Men, Comfort, May

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• One of the little-celebrated powers of Presidents (and other high government officials) is to listen to their critics with just enough sympathy to ensure their silence.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Government, Silence, Political

  John Kenneth Galbraith (1981). “A life in our times: memoirs”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Whatever sympathy I feel towards religions, whatever admiration for some of their adherents, whatever historical or biological necessity I see in them, whatever metaphorical truth, I cannot accept them as credible explanations of reality; and they are incredible to me in proportion to the degree that they require my belief in positive human attributes and intervenient powers in their divinities.

  John Fowles

  Reality, Historical, Degrees

  John Fowles (1970). “The Aristos”, Signet Book

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• Goodbyes are only for those who love with their eyes. Because for those who love with heart and soul there is no such thing as separation.

  Rumi

  Death, True Love, Goodbye

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• The onlooker had better wipe the sympathy off his face. What he has seen is a revolution, not the home of little cogs and drones. What he has seen is the dormitory of the next managerial class.

  William H. Whyte

  Home, Class, Drones

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• Christ literally walked in our shoes and entered into our affliction. Those who will not help others until they are destitute reveal that Christ's love has not yet turned them into the sympathetic persons the gospel should make them.

  Timothy Keller

  Christian, Helping Others, Shoes

  Timothy Keller (2010). “Generous Justice: How God's Grace Makes Us Just”, p.49, Penguin

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• Although I'm Australian, I find myself much more in sympathy with the Austrian version!

  David Chalmers

  Australian, Versions

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• It seemed to me that all things were possible on the island, all tyrannies and cruelties, though in small; and if, in despite of what was possible, we lived at peace with another, surely this was proof that certain laws unknown to us held sway, or else that we had been following the promptings of our hearts all this time, and our hearts had not betrayed us.

  J. M. Coetzee

  Heart, Islands, Law

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• One is led astray alike by sympathy and coldness, by praise and by blame

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Blame, Praise, Coldness

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1882). “The Autobiography of Goethe: Truth and Poetry From My Own Life”, p.576, Library of Alexandria

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• I required kindness and sympathy, but I did not believe myself utterly unworthy of it.

  Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

  Kindness, Believe, Unworthy

  Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1869). “Frankenstein: Or, The Modern Prometheus”, p.104

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• Any real New Yorker is a you-name-it-we-have-it-snob whose heart brims with sympathy for the millions of unfortunates who through misfortune, misguidedness or pure stupidity live anywhere else in the world.

  Russell Lynes

  Real, Heart, Names

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• When we appropriate money from the public funds to pay for vaccinating a horde of negroes, we do not do it because we have any sympathy for them or because we crave their blessings, but simply because we don't want them to be falling ill of smallpox

  H. L. Mencken

  Fall, Blessing, Want

  H. L. Mencken (2003). “Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche”, p.165, See Sharp Press

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• I have sympathy for young people, for their growing pains, but I balk when these growing pains are pushed into the foreground, when you make these young people the only vehicles of lifes wisdom.

  Wislawa Szymborska

  Wisdom, Pain, People

  Wisława Szymborska (1981). “Sounds, Feelings, Thoughts: Seventy Poems”, p.205, Princeton University Press

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• I believe that what so saddens the reformer is not his sympathy with his fellows in distress, but, though he be the holiest son of God, is his private ail. Let this be righted, let the spring come to him, the morning rise over his couch, and he will forsake his generous companions without apology.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Morning, Spring, Believe

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.194, Penguin

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• I nodded with genuine synthetic sympathy.

  Jeff Lindsay

  Synthetic, Genuine

  Jeff Lindsay (2005). “Darkly Dreaming Dexter”, p.164, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

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• Memory nourishes the heart, and grief abates.

  Marcel Proust

  Memories, Grief, Healing

  Marcel Proust (1966). “Letters of Marcel Proust”

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• Sympathy is in great degree a result of the mood we are in at the moment; anger forbids the emotion. On the other hand, it is easiest taken on when we are in a state of most absolute self-satisfaction.

  Lew Wallace

  Taken, Self, Hands

  Lew Wallace (2016). “Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ”, p.230, Bible Study Steps

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• I have a deep sympathy with war; it so apes the gait and bearing of the soul.

  Henry David Thoreau

  War, Soul, Apes

  Henry David Thoreau, David Gross (2007). “The Price of Freedom: Political Philosophy from Thoreau's Journals”, p.14, David M Gross

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• For even satire is a form of sympathy. It is the way our sympathy flows and recoils that really determines our lives. And here lies the vast importance of the novel, properly handled. It can inform and lead into new places our sympathy away in recoil from things gone dead. Therefore the novel, properly handled, can reveal the most secret places of life: for it is the passional secret places of life, above all, that the tide of sensitive awareness needs to ebb and flow, cleansing and freshening.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Lying, Ebb And Flow, Secret Places

  D. H. Lawrence, Michael Squires (2002). “Lady Chatterley's Lover and A Propos of 'Lady Chatterley's Lover'”, p.101, Cambridge University Press

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• In the end, for congenial sympathy, for poetry, for work, for original feeling and expression, for perfect companionship with one's friends--give me the country.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Friends, Country, Expression

  D. H. Lawrence, James T. Boulton (2002). “The Letters of D. H. Lawrence”, p.117, Cambridge University Press

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• We find nothing easier than being wise, patient, superior. We drip with the oil of forbearance and sympathy, we are absurdly just, we forgive everything. For that very reason we ought to discipline ourselves a little; for that very reason we ought to cultivate a little emotion, a little emotional vice, from time to time. It may be hard for us; and among ourselves we may perhaps laugh at the appearance we thus present. But what of that! We no longer have any other mode of self-overcoming available to us: this is our asceticism, our penance.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Wise, Emotional, Self

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• Shall I tell you what you have that other men don't?.... It's the courage of your own tenderness.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Courage, Men, Tenderness

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• True sympathy is beyond what can be seen and touched and reasoned upon.

  Rosa Campbell Praed

  Touched

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• According to your sympathy, you will take pleasure in your own happiness or in the happiness of other people; but it is always your own happiness you seek.

  John Buchanan Robinson

  Happiness, People, Pleasure

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