Sympathy Quotes

“Ignorance may be bliss, but only if it outweighs curiosity. Curiosity is a gateway drug to sympathy.”
― Victoria Schwab, The Archived

“The real test of love is loving those who we feel are the hardest ones to love.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“Who can tell what metals the gods use in forging the subtle bond which we call sympathy, which we might as well call love.”
― Kate Chopin, The Awakening

“There are some situations which men understand by instinct, by which reason is powerless to explain; in such cases the greatest poet is he who gives utterance to the most natural and vehement outburst of sorrow. Those who hear the bitter cry are as much impressed as if they listened to an entire poem, and when th sufferer is sincere they are right in regarding his outburst as sublime.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

“Even a witch wants sympathy.”
― Franny Billingsley, Chime

“I nodded with genuine synthetic sympathy.”
― Jeff Lindsay, Darkly Dreaming Dexter

“Have you ever truly, keenly felt like you don't know who you are? Do you ever do something and think, Who is at the controls? Like some mad pilot has locked you out of the cockpit? I definitely do. I feel a kind of vertigo that makes me shake afterwards. I guess we all feel it when making a difficult-seeming choice, and sometimes you seriously don't know what you want because you don't know who you're supposed to be, or who you want to be. Physics, my first and second families, my philosophy degree, had all failed to help me answer that question. The former has led me to wonder whether I am one of an infinite number of Alices in multiple universes. A quantum fuck-up, which is someone who fucks up in every one of those universes but in different ways.”
― Olivia Sudjic, Sympathy

“Before I lost my father, I never understood the rituals surrounding funerals: the wake, the service itself, the reception afterward,the dinners prepared by well-meaning friends and delivered in plastic containers, even the popular habit of making poster boards filled with photos of the dear departed. But now I know why we do those things. It's busywork, all of it. I had so much to take care of, so many arrangements to make, so many people to inform, I didn't have a moment to be engulfed by the ocean of grief that was lapping at my heels. Instead, I waded through the shallows, performing task after task, grateful to have duties to propel me forward.”
― Wendy Webb, The Tale of Halcyon Crane

“She left me, offended at my want of sympathy, and thinking, no doubt, that I envied her. I did not - at least, I firmly believed I did not.”
― Anne Brontë, Agnes Grey

“To what faults do you feel most indulgent?To the ones that arise from urgent material needs.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

“Could I tell them I was sorry their loved one was dead, when he’d tried to kill me? There was no rule of etiquette for this; even my grandmother would have been stymied.”
― Charlaine Harris, Dead as a Doornail

“Bottled, was he?" Said Colonel Bantry, with an Englishman's sympathy for alcoholic excess. "Oh, well, can't judge a fellow by what he does when he's drunk? When I was at Cambridge, I remember I put a certain utensil - well - well, nevermind.”
― Agatha Christie, The Body in the Library

“If a person's mind is controlled by forces of revenge and jealousy, it cannot express love & sympathy. And even if they show love and sympathy to others it will yield no good result. The thought will not be reflected in love but in hate.”
― Virchand Raghavji Gandhi

“I felt ashamed for having judged him so harshly without knowing the real boy. His one offense against me―goaded by Charlie’s bullying character―was easy to forgive.”
― Richelle Goodrich, Dandelions: The Disappearance of Annabelle Fancher

“I know you want me to feel some sympathy for them, but that's not who I am. I care only about those I know, and even then, not all that deeply. Strangers get nothing from me.”
― Rachel Caine, Lord of Misrule

“For those constantly full of joy, they sometimes feel a little guilty for always feeling so good. That guilt is compassion: it flies in with an attempt to share one's joy with others who do not have it.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“Oh, poor, poor fellow!' said Mrs. Elliot with a remorse that was sincere, though her congratulations would not have been.”
― E. M. Forster, The Longest Journey

“I couldn’t think of anyone I’d ever felt sorry for. There were plenty of kids I was envious of. There were others I achingly admired, but that might simply be another form of jealousy. Then there were those I feared, dreaded. And the worst of them, the man who shamed me. I could see my father’s angry features looming over my mother. I could clearly picture her beside him in his truck, cowering against the door while he belittled and assaulted her.
I guess I did know someone I felt sorry for.”
― Richelle E. Goodrich, Dandelions: The Disappearance of Annabelle Fancher

“How difficult is it for one body to feel the injustice wheeled at another? Are the tensions, the recognitions, the disappointments, and the failures that exploded in the riots too foreign?”
― Claudia Rankine, Citizen: An American Lyric

“Sympathy is two hearts tugging at one load.”
― Charles Henry Parkhurst

“I required kindness and sympathy, but I did not believe myself utterly unworthy of it.”
― Mary Shelley

“In 1881, being on a visit to Boston, my wife and I found ourselves in the Parker House with theIngersoll's, and went over to Charleston to hear him lecture. His subject was 'Some Mistakes of Moses,' and it was a memorable experience. Our lost leaders, --Emerson,Thoreau,Theodore Parker, -- who had really spoken to disciples rather than to the nation, seemed to have contributed something to form this organ by which their voice could reach the people.Every variety of power was in this orator, -- logic and poetry, humor and imagination, simplicity and dramatic art, moral and boundless sympathy.The wonderful power which Washington's Attorney-general, Edmund Randolph, ascribed toThomas Paineof insinuating his ideas equally into learned and unlearned had passed fromPaine's pen toIngersoll's tongue.The effect on the people was indescribable. The large theatre was crowded from pit to dome. The people were carried from plaudits of his argument to loud laughter at his humorous sentences, and his flexible voice carried the sympathies of the assembly with it, at times moving them to tears by his pathos.

{Conway's thoughts on the greatRobert Ingersoll}”
― Moncure Daniel Conway, My Pilgrimage to the Wise Men of the East

“I became aware of Jews in my early teens, as I started to pick up the signals from the Christian church. Not that I was Christian – I’d been an atheist since I was five. But my father, a Congregational minister, had some sympathy with the idea that the Jews had killed Christ. But any indoctrination was offset by my discovery of the concentration camps, of the Final Solution. Whilst the term 'Holocaust' had yet to enter the vocabulary I was overwhelmed by my realisation of what Germany had perpetrated on Jews. It became a major factor in my movement towards the political left. I’d already read 'The Grapes of Wrath' by John Steinbeck, the Penguin paperback that would change my life. The story of the gas chambers completed the process of radicalisation and would, just three years later, lead me to join the Communist Party.”
― Phillip Adams

“George's hand lifted and fell away again. It seemed an insult to imply that anything so small as a touch could stop the raw feeling in Sir Stephen's suddenly dark and haunted eyes.”
― Mette Ivie Harrison, The Princess and the Hound

“Truth is, Frauka, none of us know you very well at all. We can't read you.'
'Story of my life. You have no idea whatsoever how hard it is to be an untouchable. Everyone feels the absence, and it makes them uncomfortable. You get treated like shit. Working for Ravenor's the only decent job I've ever had, the only time I've felt worth anything. I guess that's over now, isn't it? Get off my back. I've covered yours long enough, and I deserve more respect, even if I make you uncomfortable.”
― Dan Abnett, Ravenor Rogue

“The family came in to select the arrangements they wanted. The woman whose husband had died was struggling dearly to keep her voice intact long enough to place the order. It wasn't long before she broke down.
Wendy didn't say a word. She moved from behind the counter to find a chair for the woman. She eased her into it. She sat beside her and let her cry. Quiet, not speaking. She brought tissues when the moment asked for it.
The woman's crying slowly came to a stop. She wiped her eyes, and she looked at Wendy. And she smiled. Just a little one. And she said, "Thank you.”
― Christian Millman

“Maybe, as Mizuko said, we won't even really die, just carry on in the feedback loop we are stuck in. Instead of connecting with new things, widening our worlds, algorithms have shrunk it to a narrow chamber with mirrored walls.”
― Olivia Sudjic, Sympathy

“He told his friends that if they really wanted to help him, they would treat him not with sympathy but with visits, phone calls, a sharing of their problems - the way they had always.. because Morrie had always been a wonderful listener.”
― Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie

“I suppose on reason why we are seldom able to comfort our neighbors with our words is that our grand-will gets adulterated, in spite of ourselves, before it can pass our lips. we can send black puddings and pettitoes without giving them a flavor of our own egoism; but language is a stream that is almost sure to smack of a mingled soil.”
― George Eliot, Silas Marner

“Let us be present in the" moment "in our care and support for the people we love and not postpone our expressions or actions of sympathy. Over and above, small gestures of kindness and assistance enrich our own emotional well-being. ( “All the words he always wanted to tell her” )”
― Erik Pevernagie