Sympathy Quotes

“Loss and possession, death and life are one, There falls no shadow where there shines no sun.”

“Grief changes shape, but it never ends.”

“There are advantages to being labeled the victim. You are listened to, paid attention to. Sympathy is bestowed upon you.”

“If your understanding of the divine made you kinder, more empathetic, and impelled you to express sympathy in concrete acts of loving-kindness, this was good theology. But if your notion of God made you unkind, belligerent, cruel, of self-righteous, or if it led you to kill in God's name, it was bad theology.”

“If you don't love yourself, it makes you incapable of knowing how to love another person.”

“It was my teacher's genius, her quick sympathy, her loving tact which made the first years of my education so beautiful. It was because she seized the right moment to impart knowledge that made it so pleasant and acceptable to me. She realized that a child's mind is like a shallow brook which ripples and dances merrily over the stony course of its education and reflects here a flower, there a bush, yonder a fleecy cloud; and she attempted to guide my mind on its way, knowing that like a brook it should be fed by mountain streams and hidden springs, until it broadened out into a deep river, capable of reflecting in its placid surface, billowy hills, the luminous shadows of trees and the blue heavens, as well as the sweet face of a little flower. Any teacher can take a child to the classroom, but not every teacher can make him learn. He will not work joyously unless he feels that liberty is his, whether he is busy or at rest; he must feel the flush of victory and the heart-sinking of disappointment before he takes with a will the tasks distasteful to him and resolves to dance his way bravely through a dull routine of textbooks. My teacher is so near to me that I scarcely think of myself apart from her. How much of my delight in all beautiful things is innate, and how much is due to her influence, I can never tell. I feel that her being is inseparable from my own, and that the footsteps of my life are in hers. All the best of me belongs to her--there is not a talent, or an aspiration or a joy in me that has not been awakened by her loving touch.”

“I am not interested in picking up crumbs of compassion thrown from the table of someone who considers himself my master. I want the full menu of rights.”

“Science is better than sympathy, if only it is science.”

“The sharp, superficial pain at being spoken to unkindly had obscured the deeper pain, which had not yet turned into something hard and heavy.”

“The purpose of human life is to serve, and to show compassion and the will to help others.”

“NFL fans have less sympathy for fallen players than the Romans had for blind Christians.”

“As a mentor, you have to be willing to put yourself in your mentee's shoes to understand their struggles that they deal with. It's not supposed to turn into a pity party by any means, but empathy speaks volumes to a mentee in need of help rather than forced sympathy.”

“It's hard for me to think of others because I'm not particularly in sympathy with the music of this century.”

“There should be a sympathy with freedom, a desire to give it scope, founded not upon visionary ideas, but upon the long experience of many generations within the shores of this happy isle, that in freedom you lay the firmest foundations both of loyalty and order.”

“He bit his lip in a manner which immediately awakened my maternal sympathy, and I helped him bite it.”

“You can’t save others from themselves because those who make a perpetual muddle of their lives don’t appreciate your interfering with the drama they’ve created. They want your poor-sweet-baby sympathy, but they don’t want to change.”

“Comfort came in and stood with an appearance of guilt and shame. Her head bent, her eyes soaked with tears, her hands and legs, vibrating like a guiter string as perspiration covered her entire body, she felt like disappearing into the thin air, maybe to another mind creating world.”

“Abstract sympathy with the working class as an economic entity is easy, but the feeling can vanish on contact with actual members of the group, who often arrive with disturbing beliefs and powerful resentments - who might not sound or look like people urban progressives want to know.”

“I cannot live my life striving only for my own security, I can only feel secure when I see myself useful in other people's life.”

“It's no good being nice and young and naive. There's no good in that at all. You've got to do it all yourself, and you've gotta learn quick. And you can't look for sympathy either.”