Quotes About Sympathy

Those who speak of love most promiscuously are the ones who've never felt it. They make some sort of feeble stew out of sympathy, compassion, contempt and general indifference, and they call it love.

the biggest sin is to be blind to others' problems and pains. Not seeing them means denying their existence.

There were many such instances, when expressions of sympathy could not be exchanged. What do you say to someone who is telling you about the rape and murder of virgins—I'm sorry, I feel your pain?

the world was shrinking, sympathies changing;

Rather than evoke our sympathy, our familiarity with the lives of the black poor has bred spasms of fear and outright contempt. But mostly it's bred indifference.

would have sympathized more had I not known that high-ranking Communist Party officials—including Wen—had a habit of steering state contracts and licenses to family members and siphoning billions into offshore accounts.

It's terrible to lose somebody, but it's also true that some people never have anybody to lose, and I think that's got to be so much worse.

It was hard to feel the remotest sympathy for any of the different fools she'd been. As opposed to the fool she was being now. People hang on to that one, she thought: the fool they are right now.

What I'm saying is nobody feels sorry for anybody anymore, nobody even pretends they do. Not even the President. It's like it's become unpatriotic.

People love to believe in danger, as long as it's you in harm's way, and them saying bless your heart.

It's terrible to lose somebody, I said, I mean, I don't know firsthand, but I can imagine it must be. But it's also true that some people never have anybody to lose, and I think that's got to be so much worse.

Away, down below now, single file on the path, comes a woman with four girls in tow, all of them in shirtwaist dresses. Seen from above this way they are pale, doomed blossoms, bound to appeal to your sympathies. Be careful. Later on you'll have to decide what sympathy they deserve.

Empathy is not sympathy. A sympathy is a form of agreement. Empathy is not agreeing with someone; it is fully, deeply understanding that person, emotionally as well as intellectually.

People want to be understood. And whatever investment of time it takes to do that will bring much greater returns of time as you work from an accurate understanding of the problems and issues and from the high Emotional Bank Account that results when a person feels deeply understood.

She looked down again and I was stymied. I sat. Oh, this was enough to make me love her, because I was right with her, understanding every second and longing to step in. I didn't even need to know the specific that was troubling her, because to me her halting voice easily stood for the general woe that hangs in the air, even on life's happiest days.

pesar de lo egoísta que un hombre pueda suponerse —escribió Smith—, evidentemente existen algunos principios en su naturaleza que lo llevan a interesarse por la suerte de los demás y a convertir la necesidad de éstos en necesaria para sí mismo, aunque no le proporcione nada, salvo el placer de contemplarlo.»

Sympathy among kin emerges from the overlap in genetic makeup that interconnects us in the great web of life. Sympathy among everyone else emerges from the impartiality of nature: each of us may find ourselves in straits where a small mercy from another grants a big boost in our own welfare

The alternative, then, to the religious theory of the source of values is that evolution endowed us with a moral sense, and we have expanded its circle of application over the course of history through reason (grasping the logical interchangeability of our interests and others'), knowledge (learning of the advantages of cooperation over the long term), and sympathy (having experiences that allow us to feel other people's pain).

The Enlightenment principle that we can apply reason and sympathy to enhance human flourishing may seem obvious, trite, old-fashioned. I wrote this book because I have come to realize that it is not. More than ever, the ideals of reason, science, humanism, and progress need a wholehearted defense

you can perpetuate life in turn. You have been endowed with a sense of sympathy—the ability to like, love, respect, help, and show kindness—and you can enjoy the gift of mutual benevolence with friends, family, and colleagues. And because reason tells you that none of this is particular to you, you have the responsibility to provide to others what you expect for yourself. You can foster the welfare of other sentient beings by enhancing

For these reasons, oxytocin is sometimes called the cuddle hormone. The reuse of the hormone in so many forms of human closeness supports a suggestion by Batson that maternal care is the evolutionary precursor of other forms of human sympathy.

Sympathy, recall, tends to be expressed in communal relationships, the kind that are also accompanied by guilt and forgiveness. Anything that creates a communal relationship, then, should also create sympathy.

Have you ever felt really close to someone? So close that you can't understand why you and the other person have two separate bodies, two separate skins?

There is no greater love than the love the wolf feels for the lamb-it-doesn't-eat.