Sympathy Quotes

“If you're looking for sympathy you'll find it between shit and syphilis in the dictionary.”
― David Sedaris, Barrel Fever: Stories and Essays

“I did not know how to reach him, how to catch up with him... The land of tears is so mysterious.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

“Men build too many walls and not enough bridges.”
― Joseph Fort Newton

“It is terribly rude to tell people that their troubles are boring.”
― Lemony Snicket, The Blank Book

“You can’t save others from themselves because those who make a perpetual muddle of their lives don’t appreciate your interfering with the drama they’ve created. They want your poor-sweet-baby sympathy, but they don’t want to change.”
― Sue Grafton, T is for Trespass

“When good people consider you the bad guy, you develop a heart to help the bad ones. You actually understand them.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“None of us can choose where we shall love...”
― Susan Kay, Phantom

“Like crying wolf, if you keep looking for sympathy as a justification for your actions, you will someday be left standing alone when you really need help.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“Good works is giving to the poor and the helpless, but divine works is showing them their worth to the One who matters.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“Though sympathy alone can't alter facts, it can help to make them more bearable.”
― Bram Stoker, Dracula

“one thing I don’t need
is any more apologies
i got sorry greetin me at my front door
you can keep yrs
i don’t know what to do wit em
they don’t open doors
or bring the sun back
they don’t make me happy
or get a mornin paper
didn’t nobody stop usin my tears to wash cars
cuz a sorry.”
― Ntozake Shange, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf

“I think a lot of psychopaths are just geniuses who drove so fast that they lost control.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“Cry me a river, build a bridge, and get over it.”
― Justin Timberlake

“When we fully understand the brevity of life, its fleeting joys and unavoidable pains; when we accept the facts that all men and women are approaching an inevitable doom: the consciousness of it should make us more kindly and considerate of each other. This feeling should make men and women use their best efforts to help their fellow travelers on the road, to make the path brighter and easier as we journey on. It should bring a closer kinship, a better understanding, and a deeper sympathy for the wayfarers who must live a common life and die a common death.”
― Clarence Darrow, The Essential Words and Writings of Clarence Darrow

“Each person you meet
is an aspect of yourself,
clamoring for love.”
― Eric Micha'el Leventhal

“The funny thing about the heart is a soft heart is a strong heart, and a hard heart is a weak heart.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“Besides love and sympathy, animals exhibit other qualities connected with the social instincts which in us would be called moral.”
― Charles Darwin

“There's nothing like your mother's sympathetic voice to make you want to burst into tears.”
― Sophie Kinsella, Confessions of a Shopaholic

“A man's ethical behaviour should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.”
― Albert Einstein

“A dog can be a ‘significant other’ as it infuses a magic fluid stream of oxytocin, trust, ease, and patience; and transforms a man’s life into a paradise of complicity and mutual sympathy, arousing at the same time an instinct of playfulness that many people have lost since their young age and that puts things in new perspectives.( "I am young and have no dog")”
― Erik Pevernagie

“The following proposition seems to me in a high degree probable—namely, that any animal whatever, endowed with well-marked social instincts, the parental and filial affections being here included, would inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience, as soon as its intellectual powers had become as well, or nearly as well developed, as in man. For, firstly, the social instincts lead an animal to take pleasure in the society of its fellows, to feel a certain amount of sympathy with them, and to perform various services for them.”
― Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man

“Why must we be freaking out about the kindness and sympathy we would like to share? What could deter us so much from opening our hearts and spilling the beans? Why should we harbor suspicions about the gentleness of people who are bubbling over with enthusiasm and goodwill? Could kindness generate such a thorny challenge in people's lives and make them feel so uncomfortable as if they were wobbling on thin ice, fearing losing balance and thus losing face? (“Schengen”)”
― Erik Pevernagie

“Walk with me for a while, my friend—you in my shoes, I in yours—and then let us talk.”
― Richelle E. Goodrich, Smile Anyway: Quotes, Verse, and Grumblings for Every Day of the Year

“No one has ever properly understood me, I have never fully understood anyone; and no one understands anyone else”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“If we can step back at times and have the guts to carve doubt in the concrete stone of our certainties, we can hear the beat of a thinking heart. While listening to the stirring of our deep selves and striving to squeeze through the thicket of our intentions, we may find an atoning venue of understanding and sympathy. ("Beware of the neighbor")”
― Erik Pevernagie

“If we want to understand people and relate to them, we must be self-aware and have self-compassion. Self-love may be a source of division but can become a key to sympathy, bridging gaps, and fostering connection instead of partition. ("Being my best friend")”
― Erik Pevernagie

“The mark of man is initiative, but the mark of woman is cooperation. Man talks about freedom; woman about sympathy, love, sacrifice. Man cooperates with nature; woman cooperates with God. Man was called to till the earth, to "rule over the earth"; woman to be the bearer of a life that comes from God.”
― Fulton J. Sheen, The World's First Love: Mary, Mother of God

“Sympathy’s easy. You have sympathy for starving children swatting at flies on the late-night commercials. Sympathy is easy because it comes from a position of power. Empathy is getting down on your knees and looking someone else in the eye and realizing you could be them, and that all that separates you is luck.”
― Dennis Lehane

“Woman's fatal weakness is to desire sympathy and comprehension.
--"Wanda”
― Ouida

“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