Sympathetic Quotes - Page 3

• The idea that people in novels should be more sympathetic than people in life simply baffles me.

  Andrew O'Hagan

  Ideas, People, Should

  "In truth" by Andrew O'Hagan, www.theguardian.com. July 14, 2007.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I suppose that the sympathetic/unsympathetic debate about characters sometimes feels to me like a misstatement of purpose. I always think of truly complex characters are falling between the cracks in that debate.

  Rick Moody

  Fall, Character, Thinking

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I try to find what makes even the worst, most despicable character sympathetic at his or her core.

  Len Wein

  Character, Trying, Lenses

  "Speaking with...LEN WEIN". Interview with Marv Wolfman, www.marvwolfman.com.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• I was sympathetic to virtually all groups that wanted to get away from the old system.

  Clarence Thomas

  Groups, Get Away, Wanted

  7 Copy quote

• Women often have a great need to portray themselves as sympathetic and pleasing, but we're also dark people with dark thoughts.

  Zadie Smith

  Dark, People, Needs

  16 Copy quote

• A good, sympathetic review is always a wonderful surprise.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Wonderful, Surprise, Reviews

  "Joyce Carol Oates, writer - portrait of the artist". Interview with Laura Barnett, www.theguardian.com. August 14, 2012.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Young people today are flooded with disconnected images but lack a sympathetic instrument to analyze them as well as a historical frame of reference in which to situate them. I am reminded of an unnerving scene in Stanley Kubrick's epic film, 2001: A Space Odyssey, where an astronaut, his air hose cut by the master computer gone amok, spins helplessly off into space.

  Camille Paglia

  Cutting, Epic, Space

  "The Magic of Images: Word and Picture in a Media Age". Arion Vol. 11, no 3, Spring 2004.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• It was physically difficult, adjusting to wheelchair
  life, but I remember a great relief and happiness that I was finally
  getting somewhere, finding musicians to work with that were sympathetic.

  Robert Wyatt

  Happiness, Musician, Relief

  8 Copy quote

• The emotions of the spectator will still be very apt to fall short of the violence of what is felt by the sufferer. Mankind, though naturally sympathetic, never conceive, for what has befallen another, that degree of passion which naturally animates the person principally concerned.

  Adam Smith

  Fall, Passion, Empathy

  Adam Smith, James R. Otteson (2004). “Adam Smith: Selected Philosophical Writings”, p.22, Imprint Academic

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• It's my experience that people are a lot more sympathetic if they can see you hurting, and for the millionth time in my life I wish for measles or smallpox or some other easily understood disease just to make it easier on me and also on them.

  Jennifer Niven

  Hurt, People, Wish

  9 Copy quote

• Aria: I went to Hollis. Because I was looking for...you know. Her. She was teaching an art class, so I ran inside, grabbed a paintbrush, and painted a scarlet A across her chest. You know, like that woman in The Scarlet Letter? It was awesome. She didn't know what hit her. And then I said, 'Now everyone will know what you've done'. Ella: Do you realize that Hester Prynne is supposed to be a sympathetic character?

  Sara Shepard

  Art, Teaching, Character

  6 Copy quote

• We don't want sympathetic liberals, we want gays to represent gays... I represent the gay street people-the 14-year-old runaway from San Antonio. We have to make up for hundreds of years of persecution. We have to give hope to that poor runaway kid from San Antonio. They go to the bars because churches are hostile. They need hope! They need a piece of the pie!

  Harvey Milk

  Kids, Gay, Years

  41 Copy quote

• He’s a pagan! I’m an artist! We’re naturally sympathetic!

  Sidney Howard

  Inspirational, Life, Art

  5 Copy quote

• Suffering is a byproduct of evolution by natural selection, an inevitable consequence that may worry us in our more sympathetic moments but cannot be expected to worry a tiger - even if a tiger can be said to worry about anything at all - and certainly cannot be expected to worry its genes.

  Richard Dawkins

  Worry, Suffering, Nihilism

  Richard Dawkins (2009). “The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution”, p.392, Simon and Schuster

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• I suppose I'll be remembered as dull. Timid. No one ever knew me. People came. They went. I was kind, I think. Not sympathetic, but considerate of others. I always gave up my place in line. I loaned out pencils and paper, or let people take them from me. I never reported a sexual assault.

  Julie Anne Peters

  Thinking, People, Paper

  4 Copy quote

• That can happen when people die, the argument with them drops away and people so flawed while they were drawing breath that at times they were all but unbearable now assert themselves in the most appealing way, and what was least to your liking the day before yesterday becomes in the limousine behind the hearse a cause not only for sympathetic amusement but for admiration

  Philip Roth

  Drawing, Yesterday, People

  Philip Roth (1997). “American Pastoral”, p.74, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I sense the world might be more dreamlike, metaphorical, and poetic than we currently believe--but just as irrational as sympathetic magic when looked at in a typically scientific way. I wouldn't be surprised if poetry--poetry in the broadest sense, in the sense of a world filled with metaphor, rhyme, and recurring patterns, shapes, and designs--is how the world works. The world isn't logical, it's a song.

  David Byrne

  Song, Believe, Design

  7 Copy quote

• To be a healthy person, you have to be sympathetic to the child you once were and maintain the continuity between you as a child and you as an adult.

  Maurice Sendak

  Children, Healthy, Adults

  9 Copy quote

• She'd been impressed by his looks at first--those sharply planed cheekbones and those black, fathomless eyes--but his affable, sympathetic personality grated on her now. She didn't like boys who looked as if they never got mad about anything. In Isabelle's world, rage equaled passion equaled a good time.

  Cassandra Clare

  Passion, Eye, Boys

  Cassandra Clare (2010). “Cassandra Clare: The Mortal Instrument Series (3 books): City of Bones; City of Ashes; City of Glass”, p.987, Simon and Schuster

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• Above all, there was Almah. Everything combined to make her most dear to me. My life has been such that I never before had seen anyone whome I loved; and here Almah was the one congenial and sympathetic, and I loved her dearly, even before I understood what my feelings were. One day I learned all, and found that she was more precious to me than all the world.

  James De Mille

  Feelings, One Day, World

  4 Copy quote

• At some time in the recent past someone had decided to brighten the ancient corridors of the University by painting them, having some vague notion that Learning Should Be Fun. It hadn’t worked. It’s a fact known throughout the universes that no matter how carefully the colors are chosen, institutional decor ends up as either vomit green, unmentionable brown, nicotine yellow or surgical appliance pink. By some little-understood process of sympathetic resonance, corridors painted in those colors always smell slightly of boiled cabbage—even if no cabbage is ever cooked in the vicinity.

  Terry Pratchett

  Fun, Past, Color

  Terry Pratchett (2012). “The Wit and Wisdom of Discworld”, p.24, Harper Collins

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Directors always used to be like the police to me - the enemy, the people to tell me what to do when I didn't want to do it. But I've lived with one for a while now and I guess I can put myself more in their position. You shouldn't be too sympathetic to them.

  Helen Mirren

  People, Police, Enemy

  "New Again: Helen Mirren". Interview with James Saynor, www.interviewmagazine.com. December 18, 2015.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Digestion is quickly shut down during stress…The parasympathetic nervous system, perfect for all that calm, vegetative physiology, normally mediates the actions of digestion. Along comes stress: turn off parasympathetic, turn on the sympathetic, and forget about digestion.

  Robert M. Sapolsky

  Stress, Perfect, Digestion

  "Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers: The Acclaimed Guide to Stress, Stress-Related Diseases, and Coping - Now Revised and Updated".

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• This is the fairest picture on our planet, the most enchanting to look upon, the most satisfying to the eye and spirit. To see the sun sink down, drowned in his pink and purple and golden floods, and overwhelm Florence with tides of color that make all the sharp lines dim and faint and turn the solid city to a city of dreams, is a sight to stir the coldest nature, and make a sympathetic one drunk with ecstasy.

  Mark Twain

  Dream, Nature, Eye

  Mark Twain (2012). “Autobiography of Mark Twain: Volume 1, Reader’s Edition”, p.76, Univ of California Press

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• I think that the environment is very a complicated question. I am very sympathetic to people who support the environment who live in the United States. I am very sympathetic to people who don't support the environment who live in a very poor country.

  Ian Bremmer

  Country, Thinking, People

  Interview with Jeff Jetton, brightestyoungthings.com. February 25, 2013.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source