He kept at true good humour’s mark
The social flow of pleasure’s tide:
He never made a brow look dark,
Nor caused a tear, but when he died.
—Thomas Love Peacock (1785–1866) English Satirist, Novelist, Author
When Man evolved Pity, he did a queer thing — deprived himself of the power of living life as it is without wishing it to become something different.
—John Galsworthy (1867–1933) English Novelist, Playwright
Life is eternal, and love is immortal,
and death is only a horizon;
and a horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight.
—Rossiter W. Raymond (1840–1918) American Polymath, Engineer, Lawyer, Novelist, Poet
For some moments in life there are no words.
—David Seltzer (b.1940) American Screenwriter, Film Producer, Film Director
No man needs sympathy because he has to work. Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.
—Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American Head of State, Political leader, Historian, Explorer
To what is a man likened, who consoles with his neighbor twelve months after his bereavement by death? He is like a surgeon, asking a man who had once broken his leg to let him break it again and heal it, that he may show him what excellent mendicaments he has.
—The Talmud Sacred Text of the Jewish Faith
Unable are the loved to die. For love is immortality.
—Emily Dickinson (1830–86) American Poet
One of the greatest of all mental pleasures is to have our thoughts often divined; ever entered into with sympathy.
—Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–38) English Poet, Novelist
Sympathy is never wasted except when you give it to yourself.
—John W. Raper (1870–1950) American Journalist, Aphorist
Sympathy is two hearts tugging at one load.
—Charles Henry Parkhurst (1842–1933) American Clergyman, Civic Reformer
Women have no sympathy and my experience of women is almost as large as Europe.
—Florence Nightingale (1820–1910) English Nurse
A human life is a story told by God.
—Hans Christian Andersen (1805–75) Danish Author, Poet, Short Story Writer
The delicate and infirm go for sympathy, not to the well and buoyant, but to those who have suffered like themselves.
—Catharine Beecher American Educationalist, Reformer
And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral drest in his shroud.
—Walt Whitman (1819–92) American Poet, Essayist, Journalist, American, Poet, Essayist, Journalist
For death is no more than a turning of us over from time to eternity.
—William Penn (1644–1718) American Entrepreneur, Political leader, Philosopher
Nobody can tell what I suffer! But it is always so. Those who do not complain are never pitied.
—Jane Austen (1775–1817) English Novelist
He spake well who said that graves are the footprints of angels.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–82) American Poet, Educator, Academic
Our sympathy is never very deep unless founded on our own feelings. We pity, but do not enter into the grief which we have never felt.
—Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–38) English Poet, Novelist
To love with the spirit is to pity, and he who pities most loves most.
—Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) Spanish Educator, Philosopher, Author
It is the eternal truth in the political as well as the mystical body, that, where one members suffers, all the members suffer with it.
—Junius Unidentified English Writer
All sympathy not consistent with acknowledged virtue is but disguised selfishness.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English Poet, Literary Critic, Philosopher
No radiant pearl, which crested fortune wears, no gem, that twinkling hangs from beauty’s ears; not the bright stars, which night’s blue arch adorn; nor rising sun, that gilds the vernal morn; shine with such lustre as the tear that flows down virtue’s manly cheek for others’ woes.
—Charles Darwin (1809–82) English Naturalist
Next to love, sympathy is the divinest passion of the human heart.
—Edmund Burke (1729–97) British Philosopher, Statesman
More helpful than all wisdom or counsel is one draught of simple human pity that will not forsake us.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans) (1819–80) English Novelist
Our sympathy is cold to the relation of distant misery.
—Edward Gibbon (1737–94) English Historian, Politician
The world has no sympathy with any but positive griefs; it will pity you for what you lose, but never for what you lack.
—Sophie Swetchine (1782–1857) Russian Mystic, Writer
Pity makes the world soft to the weak and noble to the strong.
—Edwin Arnold (1832–1904) English Poet, Journalist, Editor
One cannot weep for the entire world, it is beyond human strength. One must choose.
—Jean Anouilh (1910-87) French Dramatist
Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat. We must find each other.
—Mother Teresa (1910–97) Roman Catholic Missionary, Nun
Sympathy constitutes friendship; but in love there is a sort of antipathy, or opposing passion. Each strives to be the other, and both together make up one whole.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English Poet, Literary Critic, Philosopher
Man’s thoughts and ways shall always be in contact and sympathy with his fellow men.
—The Talmud Sacred Text of the Jewish Faith