Sympathy

“ Surely it is this soundness of nature, this broad and genial quality, this full-blooded, full-orbed sanity of spirit, which gives the men we love that wide-eyed sympathy which gives hope and power to humanity, which gives range to every good quality and is so excellent a credential of genuine manhood. Let your life and your thought be narrow, and your sympathy will shrink to a like scale. It is a quality which follows the seeing mind afield, which waits on experience. ”

“ Sir, I know it as though it were written in a book: your life has been one long calculation—your sympathy or kindness a calculated thing. Good-nature, emotion you may have had, but never the divine thing by which the world is saved. ”

“ How, I would simply ask, can he feel for others who has no sense of sympathy with his own suffering nature? If the well of human kindness be dried up within him, how can he give to the parched throats the refreshing waters of compassion? ”

“ Instead of seeking to win the unstrung instrument back to harmony, by the tender touch of loving sympathy, we mete out precisely the measure meted to us; oppose coldness to coldness, hardness to hardness, reserve to reserve, and thus a wall is built up between us, and all hope of influence is gone. We need more trust in, and more charity for, each other. Woe to the sick soul, suffering and sorrowful, its sickness only shown by the petulant word, the rude retort, the outward expression of inward wretchedness,—woe to such a soul, I say, were it left only to man’s tender mercies. ”

“ Sympathy.—Surely, surely, the only true knowledge of our fellow-man is that which enables us to feel with him—which gives us a fine ear for the heart-pulses that are beating under the mere clothes of circumstance and opinion.—George Eliot.
Next to love, sympathy is the divinest passion of the human heart.—Burke.
Outward things don't give, they draw out. You find in them what you bring to them. A cathedral makes only the devotional feel devotional. Scenery refines only the fine-minded.—Charles Buxton. ”

“ ALLIED by birth, and in mind, and similar in age—and in thought still more intimately connected, the sympathy which bound our souls together, at first sight, is less extraordinary. Shall we any longer wonder at its irresistible impulse?—Shall we strive to oppose the link of nature that draws us to each other? ”

“ God of love, may I come quickly to thee, when I am in need of protection and sympathy. Guard me against sorrow that is drawn from the imagination. May I not allow grief to drag me into misery, but with strength and courage may I find happiness in thy daily will. ”

“ They see all the details, the tides that sway a man, one from without, another from within, one through another, one within another, both together without faltering and without ceasing. And what is this insight but sympathy, an imitative sympathy, which puts us in another's place, which carries over their agitations to our own breasts, which makes our life a little world, able to reproduce the great one in abstract? ”

“ It is, perhaps, in some degree, that sympathy is in itself a pleasurable emotion; but I do believe that a great part of that which gives sweetness to the tears which we shed over the history of the afflicted good, is the inherent conviction in the mind of man, that there is a state of being, yet to come, where all shall have its compensation,--where woes undeserved, and unmerited pangs, received with resignation and borne with fortitude, shall be repaid by infinite joy and eternal happiness. ”

“ I know that in a certain point of view, and the most popular one, this seems a cold activity for our affections, a stone instead of bread. We long for sympathy, for a purely personal communication, first with the soul of the world, and then with the soul of our fellows. And happy are they who think, or know, that they have got them! ”

“ And, using this comparison, we may say that the string of gladness in the body wakes the glad string in the soul, and the sad string the string of sadness. This is that wonderful and noteworthy sympathy which unites the heterogeneous principles in man so as to form one being. ”

“ But, then, remember, the sympathy He looks for is the sympathy which He always gave, something as tender and gentle as the touch of a good surgeon's hand upon a wounded limb, but also something as strong, and as firm, and as helpful. Why sympathy gets discredited, why people speak of "a morbid craving for sympathy," is because so much sympathy is sympathy of the wrong sort. ”

“ Be it ours to shed sunshine on their path, to lighten their sorrows by the balm of sympathy, to give them the pure joy of a never-tiring affection, to strengthen failing courage, to instil faith in hours of despair. ”

“ What sorrow can grieve, what distress can discourage me, so long as I possess the firm assurance that I have the sympathy of the best and noblest of women,—that she looks upon her destiny as inseparably bound up in mine,—that our hearts are one? Providence has given me thy heart, and I want nothing more. ”

“ It is not my habit to boast of a warm heart for the poor and suffering. But my sympathy is no less sincere because I do not carry my love and solicitude for the common people constantly at my tongue's end. ”

“ Then you should have a human heart. But have you, indeed? What is your heart made of? Is there no such principle as compassion there? Do you never feel another's pain? Have you no sympathy? no sense of human woe? ”

“ Their persons, features, look, gait, gesture, familiar to our thoughts, vividly engraven. They address themselves to every one of us personally, in tones that thrill and chill, or that convulse us with merriment—and all for pleasure! They ask our sympathy, but they task it not. ”

“ There is a warm sympathy for sorrow, a motherly helpfulness in need, a maternal solicitude for the welfare of the humblest, which stretches down from the throne, and is reflected in the kindness of the poor towards each other. ”

“ To be candid, Sir, I like practical sympathy better than sentimental; the one is a reality, the other a sham or a mawkish emotion, little less than a self-compliment to a refined but useless sensibility—something which excites the sentimentalism of a drawing-room, when we are looking on the print of an hospital or the wreck of a vessel hanging on the wall, but which gives no relief to a rescued sailor, or a discharged incurable. ”

“ We know the value of sympathy—how it arms the heart to endure—how it plucks the sting from sorrow—therefore we have written these few lines to assure you, that in the remoter parts of our country, as well as in her high places, you are remembered with pity and with affection. ”

“ It is an honour which I feel, and it is a pleasure which I feel still more, for when a man has passed through this world now for a good many years, as I have done, there can be nothing dearer to his heart than expressing sympathy with the great and good, and feeling those expressions of sympathy reflected from the hearts and the eyes of a sympathising audience. ”

“ What right have you to be happy? You should be thinking about others. In fact, you should be thinking about me. I am always thinking about myself, and I expect everybody else to do the same. That is what is called sympathy. ”

“ We glory in our shame, in our swelling hearts, in our eyes heavy with tears. We want sympathy at all costs; we run about showing our bleeding vitals, asking one another whether they are not indeed a horrible sight. ”

“ Humanity is thus taught him by sympathy: where is this sympathy placed?—in the nerves: the nerves are the communicants with outward nature; the more delicate the nerves, the finer the sympathies; hence, women and children are more alive to sympathy than men. Well, mark me: do not these nerves have attraction and sympathy—-not only with human suffering, but with the powers of what is falsely termed inanimate nature? ”

“ Of sympathy the heart
Which, knowing her own bitterness,
Presumes to dwell apart.
Employ not that glad hand to raise
The God-forgotten head
To Heaven, and all the neighbours' gaze—
Cover thy mouth instead. ”

“ "I can sympathize with everything except suffering," said Lord Henry, shrugging his shoulders. "I cannot sympathize with that. It is too ugly, too horrible, too distressing. There is something terribly morbid in the modern sympathy with pain. One should sympathize with the colour, the beauty, the joy of life. The less said about life's sores, the better." ”

“ Think of the influence of sympathy. There are some natures that are gifted with a blessed power to bring consolation to men. It is not that they are glib of tongue or facile of speech, but somehow the very pressure of their hand is grateful to the saddened heart. The simple and kindly action, of which we think nothing, may tell powerfully on others, and unclose fountains of feeling deep down in the heart. ”

“ For there the charities of life may be all astir, and the quick affections thence make their far journeys of sympathy; thither may come the workers, now for the refreshment of peace, now for the balm of consolation, now, again, for the inspiration of a purer dutifulness ”

“ But perhaps we have not yet learned human sympathy; or perhaps it is the divine that we should have instead. Perhaps our sympathy is too often one of common objects or of common lusts. Perhaps each one seeks his glory, rather that he may dazzle others with it than lend his light to them. ”

“ Sympathy, without alleviating actions to a sufferer, is like a cloud without rain to the parched earth.
But the great majority of people whom we encounter are making their own crosses, and we who offer them sympathy, and condolence, are but adding to the burden's weight. ”

“ I know that now life must seem to you a broken and embittered thing and, knowing this, I venture to send this greeting across the gulf of strangerhood between us, telling you that my understanding sympathy is fully and freely yours, and bidding you take heart for the future, which now, it may be, looks so heartless and hopeless to you. ”

“ He went about gathering human sorrow into His own heart, scattering His joy, and having fellowship in agony and in deliverance, in tears and in their wiping away. Great, sympathetic soul! Why? Because He always lived with God, and, living with God, the divine love moved Him with compassion. Ah, believe me, our sorrows are more felt in heaven than on earth. And we had that glimpse of that eternal love in this Man, who did the things that pleased God, and manifested such wondrous sympathy. ”

“ We are governed by sympathy; and the extent of our sympathy is determined by that of our sensibility. ”

“ To make that sympathy a living force in your behalf, it must be proved that you are in earnest, that nothing sordid lies behind this dissatisfaction. You must prove that you have a cause for which you are willing to suffer, even to the death. ”

“ With a tender sympathy that lingers on the details of their unhappy lot, and deepens into a passionate and despairing melancholy, he witnesses their sufferings and "counts the tears" of the oppressed. ”

“ Understand me:—the sympathy which prompts us to mitigate the sorrows of others, and to share and exalt their joys; the attachment which binds us to friends and relatives; the love that entwines us with our families;—all these, being frequently attended with considerable sacrifices of our own personal convenience and enjoyment, are the first secret and silent movements of Reason as Instinct, gently breaking down the harshest and coarsest forms of Egoism, and so laying the foundation for the development of a wider and more comprehensive love. ”

“ Though often homesick, heartsick, and worn out, I like it, find real pleasure in comforting, tending, and cheering these poor souls who seem to love me, to feel my sympathy though unspoken, and acknowledge my hearty good-will, in spite of the ignorance, awkwardness, and bashfulness which I cannot help showing in so new and trying a situation. ”

“ Sometimes in those early days we found a sympathy of thought that made us for the moment intimate and easy, forgetful of our obligation, and frankly pleased with the society which we afforded one another. ”

“ We call it sometimes sympathy; but the word sympathy is associated more frequently in our minds with the idea of compassionate participation in the sufferings of those we love. Sometimes we term it a spirit of imitation, but that phrase implies rather a conscious effort to act like those whom we love, than that involuntary tendency to become like them, which is the real character of the principle in question. ”

“ If influence be the secret of her power, sympathy is the secret of her influence—sympathy with nature in its trials, temptations, sufferings, and enjoyment, experienced in a degree far beyond what man is either fitted for, or capable of affording. ”

“ What you have saved from what you have already owned, determines the nature of God’s answer to your petitions. If your heart hungers for sympathy, take the cruse of sympathy and pour it into the empty vessel of another’s life. ”

“ As it is, sympathy implies an imaginative extension of individuality, which is of enormous social value. But we remain, none the less, isolated each in his own universe, and our fellow-men and women are but shapes in the panorama, the strange, fantastic dream, which the Veiled Showman unrolls before us. ”

“ And the fruit becomes from that time a monument of a double sympathy—sympathy from man, sympathy from a dark power standing behind the agencies of nature, and speaking through them. Meantime the object of this sympathy is understood to be not the individual catastrophe, but the universal case of unfortunate love exemplified in this particular romance. ”