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Sympathy Quotes

83 quotes about sympathy. Every quote shows where it comes from and how far to trust it.

Random quote on Sympathy

Most quoted on sympathy:

The Greeks have a word for indignation at another’s unhappiness: this affect was inadmissible among Christian peoples and failed to develop, so they also lack a name for this more manly brother of pity.

Friedrich Nietzsche Daybreak (1881)

Pity in woman is a great beautifier.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton

Pity should cover both sin and woe.

Hume Nisbet

At length some pity warm'd the master's breast
('Twas then, his threshold first receiv'd a guest),
Slow creaking turns the door with jealous care,
And half he welcomes in the shivering pair.

Thomas Parnell

The capacity of sorrow belongs to our grandeur, and the loftiest of our race are those who have had the profoundest sympathies, because they have had the profoundest sorrows.

Henry Giles

In the desert a fountain is springing,
In the wide waste there still is a tree,
And a bird in the solitude singing,
Which speaks to my spirit of thee.

Lord Byron Stanzas to Augusta (1816)

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 Marriage à la mode (1673)

Pity is not natural to man. Children are always cruel. Savages are always cruel. Pity is acquired and improved by the cultivation of reason.

Samuel Johnson

We pine for kindred natures
To mingle with our own.

Felicia Hemans

Somewhere or other there must surely be
The face not seen, the voice not heard,
The heart that not yet—never yet—ah me!
Made answer to my word.

Christina Rossetti

Pity would be no more
If we did not make somebody Poor;
And Mercy no more could be
If all were as happy as we.

William Blake Songs of Experience (1794)

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

There is poetry and there is beauty in real sympathy; but there is more—there is action. […] The noblest and most powerful form of sympathy is not merely the responsive tear, the echoed sigh, the answering look—it is the embodiment of the sentiment in actual help.

Octavius Winslow

If you wish me well, do not stand pitying me, but lend me some succour as fast as you can; for pity is but cold comfort when one is up to the chin in water, and within a hair's breadth of starving or drowning.

Aesop

My friend, I spy some pity in thy looks;
O, if thine eye be not a flatterer,
Come thou on my side, and entreat for me,
As you would beg, were you in my distress:
A begging prince what beggar pities not?

William Shakespeare Richard III (1591)

Whatever the day brings, part of it always belongs to sympathy, for the well-being of men and states is ever changing. Thus observation and sympathy are the movements by which we make every moment of time our own—through which we properly live. When their pulse beats faintly, leisure becomes a burden; the bolder spirits then open the door of time and seek eternity.

Johann Friedrich Herbart

[P]ity comes
To those that pity.

Edwin Arnold

Yet, let it not be thought that I would exclude pity from the human mind. There are scarcely any that are not, to some degree, possessed of this pleasing softness; but it is at best but a short-lived passion, and seldom affords distress more than transitory assistance; with some it scarce lasts from the first impulse till the hand can be put into the pocket…

Oliver Goldsmith

Be kind, be all sympathy, for each and every human being is forced to fight against himself.

Sri Chinmoy Twenty Seven Thousand Aspiration Plants Part 1-270 (1983)

My god, I am not one to be hostile. May you show sympathy towards me once again.

Gudea

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