Sympathy Quotes - Page 16

• Before an affliction is digested, consolation ever comes too soon; and after it is digested, it comes too late.

  Laurence Sterne

  Too Late, Affliction, Consolation

  Laurence Sterne (1849). “The Works of Laurence Sterne: Containing The Life and Opinions of Tristan Shandy ... [etc.] ; with a Life of the Author Written by Himself”, p.98

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• The professional must learn to be moved and touched emotionally, yet at the same time stand back objectively: I've seen a lot of damage done by tea and sympathy.

  Anthony Storr

  Tea, Done, Damage

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• A silent look of affection and regard when all other eyes are turned coldly away-the consciousness that we possess the sympathy and affection of one being when all others have deserted us-is a hold, a stay, a comfort, in the deepest affliction, which no wealth could purchase, or power bestow.

  Charles Dickens

  Love, Eye, Comfort

  Charles Dickens (1866). “Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club”, p.296

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• Science is better than sympathy, if only it is science.

  E. M. Forster

  Ifs

  E M Forster (2011). “Maurice”, p.175, Hachette UK

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• 'Oh, poor, poor fellow!' said Mrs. Elliot with a remorse that was sincere, though her congratulations would not have been.

  E. M. Forster

  Congratulations, Sincere, Poor

  E. M. Forster (2013). “Delphi Collected Works of E. M. Forster (Illustrated)”, p.278, Delphi Classics

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• There is too much sour grapes for my taste in the present American attitude. The time to denounce the bankers was when we were all feeding off their gold plate; not now! At present they have not only my sympathy but my preference. They are the last representatives of our native industries.

  Edith Wharton

  Attitude, Gold, Bankers

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• I thought she'd [her mother] offer me some sympathy. Instead, she said, 'Don't you ever call me crying again! You wanted to be in this business, so you better toughen up!' And I did.

  Jennifer Lopez

  Mother, Cry, Said

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• The most reserved of men, that will not exchange two syllables together in an English coffee-house, should they meet at Ispahan, would drink sherbet and eat a mess of rice together.

  William Shenstone

  Coffee, Men, Two

  William Shenstone (1804). “Essays on Men and Manners”, p.43

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• For the dead there are no more toils.

  Sophocles

  Death, Dying, Toil

  Sophocles (2013). “Sophocles II: Ajax, The Women of Trachis, Electra, Philoctetes, The Trackers”, p.127, University of Chicago Press

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• Here's my rule: You always want to pay cash for your own books, because if they look at the name on the credit card and then they look at the name on the book jacket, then there's this look of such profound sympathy for you that you had to resort to this. It really is withering.

  Carl Hiaasen

  Book, Names, Profound

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• Sympathy is a sweet thing.

  Louisa May Alcott

  Sweet, Sweet Things

  Louisa May Alcott (1872). “Little Men: Fife at Plumfield with Jo's Boys”, p.36

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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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• 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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• Many of the artists who have represented Negro life have seen only the comic, the ludicrous side of it, and have lacked sympathy with and appreciation for the warm, big heart that dwells within such a rough exterior.

  Henry Ossawa Tanner

  Appreciation, Heart, Artist

  Henry Ossawa Tanner, Anna O. Marley (2012). “Henry Ossawa Tanner: Modern Spirit”, p.115, Univ of California Press

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• I think I feel rather differently about sympathy to what seems the normal view. I like just to feel it is there, but not always expressed.

  A. C. Benson

  Thinking, Views, Normal

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