Top 235 Sympathy Quotes

The novelist must look on humanity without partiality or prejudice. His sympathy, like that of the historian, must be unbounded, and untainted by sect or party.

I tend to foster drama via bleakness. If I want the reader to feel sympathy for a character, I cleave the character in half, on his birthday. And then it starts raining. And he’s made of sugar.

Something that’s seldom appreciated about me is that I am in sympathy with a great deal of what Marx wrote, except that I’m on the side of the bourgeoisie.

I have a theory because I was being beaten up a lot by people outside of school, it was almost like if I could make myself sick enough they’d take sympathy on me.

I have buckets of sympathy for the obese, often subject to cruelty, ridicule, denunciation, and contempt.

Artworks are especially good at helping our psyches in a variety of ways: they rebalance our moods, lend us hope, usher in calm, stretch our sympathies, reignite our senses, and reawaken appreciation.

‘Ninnu Kori’ urges us to take a broader view of life, look past stumbling blocks, and rise above self sympathy.

If our hearts are ready for anything, we can open to our inevitable losses, and to the depths of our sorrow. We can grieve our lost loves, our lost youth, our lost health, our lost capacities. This is part of our humanness, part of the expression of our love for life.

I was brought up to be sympathetic toward others.

I’m in total sympathy with Dick Smith‘s sentiments; I only wish there were grounds for saying we Australians would never tolerate such appalling treatment of refugees being carried out in our name.

I don’t think it’s an incredibly radical premise to try and have sympathy for someone who has made a mistake.

It is by a wise economy of nature that those who suffer without change, and whom no one can help, become uninteresting. Yet so it may happen that those who need sympathy the most often attract it the least.

Reasoned arguments and suggestions which make allowance for the full difficulties of the state of war that exists may help, and will always be listened to with respect and sympathy.

Tears are the silent language of grief.

Many migrants awaiting asylum hearings in the U.S. never show up for their court dates. And the longer they stay in the U.S., the more sympathy they draw in the media and from many compassionate Americans.

Men we shall have only as we make manhood the object of the work of the schools – intelligence, broad sympathy, knowledge of the world that was and is, and of the relation of men to it – this is the curriculum of that Higher Education which must underlie true life.

Fanatics end by subverting their own argument. For instance, animal rights activists have some point, and many people feel sympathy with them. But animal rights fanatics do not have a point. They are the sort of people who threaten human beings in their effort to ‘defend‘ animals.

I wasn’t a person to cry or point fingers or find any sympathy.

Ultimately, knowing God and reading the Word, it helps with patience with people, understanding, empathy and sympathy that they might not have that I have. If God gave it to me, why not exercise it?

I have every sympathy for writers. It’s a mystery to me what they do. I can edit. I can cross out and say, ‘I’m not saying that’ or, ‘How about we move this to here? Wouldn’t that make that bit of the story better?’ But where any of it comes from is beyond me. I will never write a play or a novel.

If the terrorists have the sympathy of people, it’s much harder to find them. So we need people on our side, and that leads us to be responsible leaders of the world, show some concern with the problems.

From the end spring new beginnings.

Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow. It empties today of its strength.

I am convinced that, despite what you think of Obama, I don’t think Obama has a person-to-person connection with people. I think people love him because of his race and feel sorry for him, object of sympathy. I think people feel he’s a victim, he portrays himself as a victim of America; he gets sympathy that way.

Only by joy and sorrow does a person know anything about themselves and their destiny. They learn what to do and what to avoid.

I sometimes get that wonderful sympathy between me and the audience, telling me I’ve reached their hearts. And when I do, the thrill is mine.

There is a great deal of sympathy amongst workers for the Occupy Wall Street movement. We understand their frustration.

Loss and possession, death and life are one, There falls no shadow where there shines no sun.

The easiest way for readers to connect with characters and feel sympathy is to make the character entertaining, sympathetic and likeable.

The only cure for grief is action.

Any mind that is capable of real sorrow is capable of good.

We need to broaden our sympathies both in space and time – and perceive ourselves as part of a long heritage, and stewards for an immense future.

Learning a foreign language, and the culture that goes with it, is one of the most useful things we can do to broaden the empathy and imaginative sympathy and cultural outlook of children.

This sympathy is not translated into force against the British government because it is not like the anti- apartheid movement which had a high profile here and Mandela is a more engaging figure than Yasser Arafat.

It was no easy feat becoming Dominick Dunne. Think about it. He was the most celebrated chronicler of downtrodden socialites. He feasted on their famine with little sympathy or admiration for their formerly exalted positions. Yet somehow they invited him back.

It’s no good being nice and young and naive. There’s no good in that at all. You’ve got to do it all yourself, and you’ve gotta learn quick. And you can’t look for sympathy either.

When Oliver Stone and Woody Allen came forward to express sympathy for Mr. Weinstein, everybody rolled their eyes at them, too.

I’ve never wanted sympathy votes in anything I do in my life.

Any sympathy won for Aileen Wuornos based on a lie is not sympathy at all. The question is, can we have sympathy for the circumstances of someone’s life? That’s what I was interested in.

After you have wept and grieved for your physical losses, cherish the functions and the life you have left.

The worst nickname I ever had was Tim Pig-ears-Smith. I had big ears. When I was younger, it was more pronounced. So I felt huge sympathy towards Prince Charles over that.

In externals we advance with lightening express speed, in modes of thought and sympathy we lumber on in stage-coach fashion.

More negatives write than call. It’s a cheap shot for me to go on the air with the critical letters or E-mail I get because the reaction of the listeners is always an instantaneous expression of sympathy for me and contempt for the poor critic.

I want the municipality to be a helping hand to the man with a desire of sympathy, to help the fallen when it is not in their power to help themselves.

I don’t want to be entertained. I don’t want visuals or musicals. I don’t want a vacation. I don’t want to quit. I don’t want sympathy. The cry of my heart is ‘Just Give Me Jesus.’

I have to express sympathy from the bottom of my heart to those people who were taken as wartime comfort women. As a human being, I would like to express my sympathies, and also as prime minister of Japan I need to apologize to them.

The rule of friendship means there should be mutual sympathy between them, each supplying what the other lacks and trying to benefit the other, always using friendly and sincere words.

First and foremost, I would like to extend my deepest sympathies to the family of Michael Brown. As I have said in the past, I know that, regardless of the circumstances here, they lost a loved one to violence. I know the pain that accompanies such a loss knows no bounds.

I wasn’t embarrassed that I’d had a stroke, but I just didn’t want people to think I was milking it or looking for sympathy. It happened, and I dealt with it. Afterwards, I tried to do what I could for other people who had strokes, speaking at hospitals that treated stroke victims.

Our trials, our sorrows, and our grieves develop us.

I have a great deal of sympathy for reluctant readers because I was one. I would do anything to avoid reading. In my case, it wasn’t until I was 13 and discovered the ‘Lord of the Rings’ that I learned to love reading.

My impressions of the Russian Revolution can be divided into two periods. The first period was when I showed deep sympathy. My second period is one of disappointment. This change was the result of close observation on the spot.

Our late Leader, Dr. Sun Yat-sen, with his universal sympathy for all oppressed and his profound understanding of Jesus’ revolutionary spirit of love and sacrifice, carried on his revolutionary work for forty years and brought about at last the liberation of the Chinese people.

Authors are not a special case, deserving of more sympathy than many other groups. We are a particular case of a general degradation of the quality of life, and we are not going to stop pointing it out, because we speak for many other groups as well.

There’s a certain amount of sympathy here for the Bush administration‘s problem, which is they would like to get rid of Saddam Hussein and they would like to have the Kurds autonomous.

A sympathetic friend can be quite as dear as a brother.

Those who peacefully gather to express sympathy for the family of Michael Brown must have their rights respected at all times. And journalists must not be harassed or prevented from covering a story that needs to be told.

When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions.

I don’t really distinguish between sympathy and honesty when I’m writing. The two go together – I’m interested in inhabiting my characters, seeing the world through their eyes.

The late Tom Wicker’s biography of Nixon, called ‘One of Us,’ is really quite good: you see the biographer discovering dimensions of sympathy for his subject that he hadn’t expected to feel.

I always received much more satisfaction as a defense attorney in obtaining an acquittal for a client than I ever have as a D.A. in obtaining a conviction. All my interests and sympathies tend to be on the side of the individual as opposed to the state.

No one has yet realized the wealth of sympathy, the kindness and generosity hidden in the soul of a child. The effort of every true education should be to unlock that treasure.

There’s little place for sympathy in football.

I learnt pity, sympathy, and what it was like to be at the other end of the stick. Such lessons can’t be learnt in lecture halls.

A creative element is surely present in all great systems, and it does not seem possible that all sympathy or fundamental attitudes of will can be entirely eliminated from any human philosophy.

What ye have been ye still shall be, When we are dust the dust among, O yellow flowers!

Sympathy with nature is part of a good person‘s religion.

I can hardly express in words my deep feeling and sympathy for them, knowing as I do, the many serious handicaps and obstacles that will confront them in almost every walk of life.

What is it that distinguishes you and me from the lower animals – from the beasts? More, I say, than anything else, human sympathy – human sympathy.

In Japanese culture, there is a belief that God is everywhere – in mountains, trees, rocks, even in our sympathy for robots or Hello Kitty toys.

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 life’s wisdom.

According to your sympathy, you will take pleasure in your own happiness or in the happiness of other people; but it is always your own happiness you seek.

Here bring your wounded hearts, here tell your anguish; Earth has no sorrow that Heaven cannot heal.

Sympathy is two hearts tugging at one load.

All art is an intensely vulnerable gesture, and it is made with no small amounts of risk, and fear. So, I have plenty of sympathy for self-defense mechanisms, especially among artists.

There is a joy in sorrow which none but a mourner can know.

Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.

People do not realise that if they say something negative about someone, it turns into positivity for the person they are speaking badly about because they get sympathy.

It is only after one is in trouble that one realizes how little sympathy and kindness there are in the world.

Labor should be recognized as entitled to consult with management in the mutual interest. Labor cannot be driven, and business cannot be successful unless the men employed in it are enthusiastic and loyal. That loyalty cannot be obtained with a big stick; it must be based upon fair dealing and sympathy.

Interest does not tie nations together; it sometimes separates them. But sympathy and understanding does unite them.

There are times when a sports figure doesn’t deserve sympathy.

I’m not sympathetic. I have zero sympathy. I understand about emotional eating, I understand how painful the process can be, but I also understand that change is possible.

I have embraced crying mothers who have lost their children because our politicians put their personal agendas before the national good. I have no patience for injustice, no tolerance for government incompetence, no sympathy for leaders who fail their citizens.

I have always had sympathy for Atletico Madrid because, among other things, I have friends there, and my father always liked Atletico.

Marriage must be a relation either of sympathy or of conquest.

Women are about the best lovers of nature, after all; at least of nature in her milder and more familiar forms. The feminine character, the feminine perceptions, intuitions, delicacy, sympathy, quickness, are more responsive to natural forms and influences than is the masculine mind.

Pity may represent little more than the impersonal concern which prompts the mailing of a check, but true sympathy is the personal concern which demands the giving of one’s soul.

The Who on record were dynamic. Roger Daltrey’s delivery allowed vulnerability without weakness; doubt and confusion, but no plea for sympathy.

I believe that everyone can appreciate the right of a family to grieve the loss of a loved one in peace, regardless of anyone‘s position on the war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I am the son of a small and far-away nation and the other laureates have all come from different countries from all over the world and we all were equally received here with signs of sympathy.

I believe that we must reach our brother, never toning down our fundamental oppositions, but meeting him when he asks to be met, with a reason for the faith that is in us, as well as with a loving sympathy for them as brothers.

There are two classes of women in Soviet Russia. There is the professional class, which has taken the place of the nobility and includes government officials, artists, doctors, composers and writers as well as former members of the old nobility whose sympathy is with the Soviets, and also the peasant class.

Grief is only the memory of widowed affections.

Sympathy is charming, but it does not make up for pain.

My friends would say I’m not the person to go to for tea, a cuddle and sympathy, because I can’t deliver. But if you want something sorted out and need a champion who will stand by your side, that is me.

Any relations in a social order will endure, if there is infused into them some of that spirit of human sympathy which qualifies life for immortality.

I spent three and a half years writing the novel ‘Chang & Eng,’ about the conjoined brothers for whom the term ‘Siamese twins‘ was contrived, and when I think of these afflicted people, my only emotion is one of profound sympathy.

I’d lied many times: to bolster my credentials, to elicit sympathy, to make myself appear less ordinary.

A person who has sympathy for mankind in the lump, faith in its future progress, and desire to serve the great cause of this progress, should be called not a humanist, but a humanitarian, and his creed may be designated as humanitarianism.

I’m not looking for sympathy at all.

Pretty much all the drivers I get on with, at least to say ‘Hi’ and have a conversation. But when the helmet‘s on, you don’t care who it is. You have no sympathy: someone blows an engine in front of you, if it means you gain a position, then you’re smiling.

The American people want something terse, forcible, picturesque, striking – something that will arrest their attention, enlist their sympathy, arouse their indignation, stimulate their imagination, convince their reason, awaken their conscience.

My mother listened to all the news from the camp during the strike. She said little, especially when my father or the men who worked for him were about I remember her instinctive and unhesitating sympathy for the miners.

You will find that the woman who is really kind to dogs is always one who has failed to inspire sympathy in men.

Great grief does not of itself put an end to itself.

We were united not only by political respect for each other, but also by deep mutual sympathy as people.

A crowd always thinks with its sympathy, never with its reason.

A generation ago, American war planners made the mistake of believing that short-term Communist sympathies would unite China and Vietnam. We were wrong, and it tragically misshaped our policy in Vietnam.

I felt bad when George Bush was booed. But only briefly. My sympathy for that man has a half-life of about four seconds.

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.

To note an artist‘s limitations is but to define his talent. A reporter can write equally well about everything that is presented to his view, but a creative writer can do his best only with what lies within the range and character of his deepest sympathies.

Kindliness and sympathy, fellowship and understanding, are always good, but best when they come from a distant corner of the world.

Most of my younger Native American friends are not in any way looking for sympathy, and they’re not looking to lay guilt on anybody. They have their dignity, and they do what they do.

The purpose of human life is to serve, and to show compassion and the will to help others.

Love and death are the two great hinges on which all human sympathies turn.

I’ve changed in my sympathies since I’ve become a mother myself. In high school I went through a period where I was close with my mom and had to break with her in order to find myself and come back. Since that was my experience, that’s often what happens in my books.

Fess up, ‘Hunger Games‘ fans: Does anyone care about Peeta or find him attractive? He’s the Ron Weasley of the series: he gets points for callow valor and sympathy for his run of bad luck, but he remains a pasty, earnest bore.

I have sympathy for anyone who finds consolation anywhere we can. And many people do find it in religious tradition as it has been. I mean, I love much of that tradition. But somehow, that just didn’t speak to me in the way that it does to some.

Obviously, after the accident, I felt let down. Questions arose: Why me? Why was I the one to suffer? People around me started giving me looks of sympathy which made me feel worse. But then, I pulled myself together and decided to win over the disability.

I have huge sympathy for Prince William. He was born into a deeply unenviable life that most of us would abhor, and what’s more, he lost his mother at an early age.

We all have to announce our full solidarity with the struggle of those seeking freedom and justice in Syria, and translate this sympathy into a clear political vision that supports a peaceful transition to a democratic system of rule that reflects the demands of the Syrian people for freedom.

It is a great consolation for me to remember that the Lord, to whom I had drawn near in humble and child-like faith, has suffered and died for me, and that He will look on me in love and compassion.

The truth is that at the White House and in Congress, you are as likely to find sympathy for animal issues among Republicans as among Democrats.

Women ought to feel a peculiar sympathy in the colored man’s wrong, for, like him, she has been accused of mental inferiority, and denied the privileges of a liberal education.

I have no sympathy for debunking human achievements that, in the end, gave ordinary people liberty.

This circus that’s advertised to show and furnish a little amusement for us heathens is owned by a woman, one whose pluck catches my sympathy every time.

I’m not a person who lives for sympathy.

I am a believer in the evolutionary process, and yet I have sympathy for the friends of mine who are creationists. I don’t find the positions incompatible.

I say to people who care for people who are dying, if you really love that person and want to help them, be with them when their end comes close. Sit with them – you don’t even have to talk. You don’t have to do anything but really be there with them.

Truly, it is in darkness that one finds the light, so when we are in sorrow, then this light is nearest of all to us.

True Scouts are the best friends of animals, for from living in the woods and wilds, and practising observation and tracking, they get to know more than other people about the ways and habits of birds and animals, and therefore they understand them and are more in sympathy with them.

Those who weep recover more quickly than those who smile.

What does love look like? It has the hands to help others. It has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy. It has eyes to see misery and want. It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men. That is what love looks like.

I like movies that make you semi fall in love with the villain so you have sympathy for him.

People who drink to drown their sorrow should be told that sorrow knows how to swim.

You can’t have empathy for somebody that’s gone through something you haven‘t – because, definitionally, you can’t. But you can feel for them and have sympathy for them. And that’s what this country needs to practice more. It’s about realizing that you do come from a different place.

The irony is that I’m actually a very empathetic person, but I don’t believe in sympathy at all.

It is the right of our people to organize to oppose any law and any part of the Constitution with which they are not in sympathy.

The infuriating thing about not liking your weight when you’re slim is that there’s no sympathy and very rarely any help.

The first duty of an historian is to be on guard against his own sympathies.

My guitar was loud as hell, and I had no sympathy for anybody else.

I didn’t go to university. Didn’t even finish A-levels. But I have sympathy for those who did.

IT is mere coincidence that Cooper was born in the year which produced The Power of Sympathy and that when he died Uncle Tom’s Cabin was passing through its serial stage, and yet the limits of his life mark almost exactly the first great period of American fiction.

Farewell, dearest friend, never to see one another any more till at the right hand of Christ.

The knowledge that we have brother scouts working in the same uniform, to the same ends, in the same way, in all corners of the Empire, cannot but make scouts proud of their brotherhood, and cannot fail to bring them into closer sympathy.

I would rather be kept alive in the efficient if cold altruism of a large hospital than expire in a gush of warm sympathy in a small one.

Our sympathy is cold to the relation of distant misery.

I recognise fully why people wear poppies, I totally respect everyone’s right to do so and I have total sympathy for anyone who has lost loved ones due to conflict.

Jewish Americans weren’t just integrated, like other ethnic and religious groups. They also attracted a particular sympathy and admiration, rooted in Holocaust remembrance, affection for Israel, and a distinctive pride in the scope of their success.

Like many Americans my thoughts and prayers are with the people of London. My deepest sympathies are extended to those who lost a loved one in the recent terror attacks.

You have to have sympathy for and an empathy with a character in order to play them.

What’s interesting to me is that people engage survivors from a place of pity all the time – a place of sympathy.

What are gold and jewels and precious utensils? Mere dross and dirt. The human face and the human heart, reciprocations of kindness and love, and all the nameless sympathies of our nature – these are the only objects worth being attached to.

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.

For reasons historic, aesthetic, and political, we Jews are most attuned to the anti-Semitism of the far Right – and we find the most sympathy among our progressive allies when these are our attackers.

My mother’s sympathies were strongly with the Union. She knew that war was bound to come, but so confident was she in the strength of the Federal Government that she devoutly believed that the struggle could not last longer than six months at the utmost.

Thinking back to how it fell apart for Mourinho at Chelsea, I do have some sympathy for him. At most clubs it is the manager who determines the long-term stability of the players but at Chelsea it seems very much the other way round.

One’s life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, indignation and compassion.

I think, in a written novel, the way in which you play with the readers’ emotion or the way in which you engage the readers’ emotions can be very indirect. You could come at it through irony or comedy, etcetera, and you could capture people’s sympathies and feelings kind of by stealth if you like.

Both tears and sweat are salty, but they render a different result. Tears will get you sympathy; sweat will get you change.

Sympathy is one of the principles most widely rooted in our nature: we rejoice to see ourselves reflected in another; and, perversely enough, we sometimes have a secret pleasure in seeing the sin which dwells in ourselves existing under a deformed and monstrous aspect in another.

Having a baby is a disaster for your career. I don’t think there’s any sympathy.

AIDS had won gays sympathy; they no longer seemed the privileged brats that the general populace had resented in the 1970s.

Jamal Khashoggi was a Muslim Brotherhood operative, and so I don’t really feel sympathy for him.

The community stagnates without the impulse of the individual. The impulse dies away without the sympathy of the community.

Bear and endure: This sorrow will one day prove to be for your good.

There’s a critic that I love, Manohla Dargis of the ‘L.A. Weekly.’ I like the underground point of view; it’s my old radical sympathies. Maybe I like her because she likes my movies.

NFL fans have less sympathy for fallen players than the Romans had for blind Christians.

I joined the Party definitely in 1923 after having already been in sympathy with it before.

Almost all of our sorrows spring out of our relations with other people.

Moreover, Hispanics‘ sympathy for big government represents a cultural predilection as well as an economic one.

Sympathy relies on a common experience. If you’re clumsy, you might have sympathy for others who tend to bump into things. Empathy, on the other hand, is the ability to understand another person’s feelings even if you’ve never experienced them yourself.

Teetotallers lack the sympathy and generosity of men that drink.

It appears to be a law that you cannot have a deep sympathy with both man and nature.

Since this war began our sympathy has gone out to all the suffering people who have been dragged into it. Further hundreds of millions have become involved since I spoke at Limerick fortnight ago.

With a film, you just don’t have time to build sympathy for the character. But I think we’re moving away from that in TV. With TV, you have a little more leeway to allow them to rise and fall and rise again and be much more complicated beings.

At a family’s most difficult time, I want to make sure at a minimum that they have the very basic of comforts: the ability to grieve their loss privately and the knowledge that their country is grateful for their loved one’s sacrifice and service.

Justice must be done in investigating the tragic death of Mr. Freddie Gray. His family deserves our deepest sympathy and respect for their loss, and our admiration for their courage in calling us, as a city, to act as our better selves.

I think that a lot of people don’t understand how much discrimination transgender people actually face. They think that we’re just kind of saying it to put it out there and get sympathy, but that’s not true at all.

I have to have a character worth caring about. I tend not to start writing books about people I don’t have a lot of sympathy for because I’m just going to be with them too long.

I’m constantly amazed by the ability a child has to show sympathy, to read emotions, to get to the heart of any situation. It’s unfiltered and completely inspiring.

I will indulge my sorrows, and give way to all the pangs and fury of despair.

Not without hope we suffer and we mourn.

I’m not going to give a courtesy gift to a person who’s going to win, and I’m not going to give a sympathy gift to a person who’s going to lose.

Obviously, Jay-Z is one of the greatest entertainers of the world today. Not only is he a remarkable rhetorical genius, he’s also a man of deep sympathy and empathy for those who are lost and vulnerable, but especially under-educated youth of all cultures and stripes.

It is in our faults and failings, not in our virtues, that we touch each other, and find sympathy. It is in our follies that we are one.

Sorrow is a fruit. God does not make it grow on limbs too weak to bear it.

It’s hard for me to think of others because I’m not particularly in sympathy with the music of this century.

A lot of actors find it impossible not to ask for the audience’s sympathy. They have a need to twinkle.

Barton Fink is just too self-important as an artist to get much sympathy.

Sorrow is so easy to express and yet so hard to tell.

People love sympathy, people love the underdog. For me, sympathy is not part of my drag aesthetic.

When the reader and one narrator know something the other narrator does not, the opportunities for suspense and plot development and the shifting of reader sympathies get really interesting.

If men and women are to understand each other, to enter into each other’s nature with mutual sympathy, and to become capable of genuine comradeship, the foundation must be laid in youth.

If I’m feeling outraged, grief, disbelief, frustration, sympathy, that gets channeled through me and into my pictures and hopefully transmitted to the viewer.

Sorrow can be alleviated by good sleep, a bath and a glass of wine.

Sympathy is something that shouldn’t be bestowed upon the Yankees. Apparently it angers them.

As a mentor, you have to be willing to put yourself in your mentee’s shoes to understand their struggles that they deal with. It’s not supposed to turn into a pity party by any means, but empathy speaks volumes to a mentee in need of help rather than forced sympathy.

We do not learn by inference and deduction and the application of mathematics to philosophy, but by direct intercourse and sympathy.

Sympathy is important, but it rings hollow if not followed by action.

If someone needs help, I don’t do tea and sympathy, but I’m honest and practical – that’s how I was brought up.

It is foolish to tear one’s hair in grief, as though sorrow would be made less by baldness.

People do get hurt by jellyfish, as they do by sharks and spiders, and I have great sympathy for the anguish and pain these effects may cause, but if you pay any attention to the statistics it is clear that nature is not out to get us.

It’s hard to penetrate characters who are very cut off and lack empathy and to do it with sympathy. It’s so easy to make a damaged character repugnant.

Sonia Gandhi and her husband have always been persons I look at with a lot of respect. Of course, one of the reasons we look at India with a lot of sympathy and enthusiasm is Sonia Gandhi. Now she is Indian, not Italian, but she will always represent a myth for Italians.

Okay, so, sometimes in life, I can be a score-keeper – someone who keeps track of what he gives and what he gets in return. An annoying quality, to say the least, and I’m sure my wife has your sympathy, but it’s made me highly attuned to when and where credit is due.

If you suppress grief too much, it can well redouble.

I have great sympathy for people that are infertile, but a life is not something you can give away.

Staying married may have long-term benefits. You can elicit much more sympathy from friends over a bad marriage than you ever can from a good divorce.

Men are often biased in their judgment on account of their sympathy and their interests.

Personally, I have detested Gordon Brown since the moment in 2001 when he tried to make cheap capital out of the Laura Spence affair; as his troubles have piled up, I have felt no sympathy for him at all.

Empathy is much bigger than sympathy. When the character is empathised with, that means you have succeeded as an actor. So even if it’s a villain, the audiences don’t hate you… they understand why you have turned into a villain.

In documentary filmmaking, there’s a tradition of telling stories about victims. We often do that from a very patronizing place, but mostly we do it from a very selfish place, to reassure ourselves that our lives are in sympathy and solidarity with the victims.

Right now, American law bars the admission of aliens suspected of terrorist activity – but not of terrorist sympathies.

There is no pain so great as the memory of joy in present grief.

I don’t care about sympathy. I care about playing a character who’s understandable and clear.

I’ve always liked Saturn. But I also have some sympathy for Pluto because I heard it’s been downgraded from a planet, and I think it should remain a planet. Once you’ve given something planetary status it’s kind of mean to take it away.

Children require guidance and sympathy far more than instruction.

To the factory farmer, in contrast to the traditional farmer with his sense of honor and obligation, the animals are ‘production units,’ and accorded all the sympathy that term suggests.

In grade one and two, I was definitely into heavy metal and Satanic rock music, bands that had attributes that were quote-unquote ‘Satanic,’ even things like the Rolling Stones with ‘Their Satanic Majesties Request‘ and ‘Sympathy for the Devil,’ but also like Motley Crue and Kiss and Alice Cooper.

California must be all American or all Chinese. We are resolved that it shall be American, and are prepared to make it so. May we not rely upon your sympathy and assistance?

September 11th was a moment when America had the sympathy of the world.

When we are out of sympathy with the young, then I think our work in this world is over.

Grief changes shape, but it never ends.

This airline is grateful for his extensive contributions and we will miss his friendship and support. We extend our deepest sympathies to the Casey family on its personal loss.

And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral drest in his shroud.

I like the Rolling Stones for karaoke. ‘Sympathy For The Devil’ is a great one.

It’s not very interesting to establish sympathy for people who, on the surface, are instantly sympathetic. I guess I’m always attracted to people who, if their lives were headlines in a newspaper, you might not be very sympathetic about them.

Any other illness and you have time off work, but there is a lot of stigma around mental illness. It’s frightening to talk about it. The people suffering don’t want sympathy.

Criticism in the universities, I’ll have to admit, has entered a phase where I am totally out of sympathy with 95% of what goes on. It’s Stalinism without Stalin.

You have to take strength from the people that love you and the people that love Barbara and the huge number of expressions of sympathy and compassion and support. That has been extremely moving.

I have a lot of sympathy for young people because I realize how disturbed I was. How would I deal with life in the future? What would I do for a living?

The cure for sorrow is to learn something.

My upbringing has given me sympathy for the idea of isolation and what it is to be a new person in the room, where everyone else has some amount of familiarity and comfort.