The water-lily, in the midst of waters, opens its leaves and expands its petals, at the first pattering of the shower, and rejoices in the rain-drops with a quicker sympathy than the packed shrubs in the sandy desert.
Apt words have power to suage the tumors of a troubled mind.
As we learn to have compassion for ourselves, the circle of compassion for others - what and whom we can work with, and how - becomes wider.
Those who have never been ill are incapable of real sympathy for a great many misfortunes
It is a lively spark of nobleness to descend in most favour to one when he is lowest in affliction
The motive of science was the extension of man, on all sides, into Nature, till his hands should touch the stars, his eyes see through the earth, his ears understand the language of beast and bird, and the sense of the wind; and, through his sympathy, heaven and earth should talk with him. But that is not our science.
I did not know how to reach him, how to catch up with him. . . The land of tears is so mysterious.
At this very moment,. . . the most frightful horrors are taking place in every corner of the world. People are being crushed, slashed, disembowelled, mangled; their dead bodies rot and their eyes decay with the rest. Screams of pain and fear go pulsing through the air at the rate of eleven hundred feet per second. After travelling for three seconds they are perfectly inaudible. These are distressing facts; but do we enjoy life any the less because of them? Most certainly we do not.
Of a truth, men are mystically united: a mystic bond of brotherhood makes all men one.
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.
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.
Tears are God's gift to us. Our holy water. They heal us as they flow.
I don't care about sympathy. I care about playing a character who's understandable and clear.
We will grieve not, rather find strength in what remains behind.
There is no reconciliation until you recognize the dignity of the other, until you see their view- you have to enter into the pain of the people. You've got to feel their need.
Sympathy is a supporting atmosphere, and in it we unfold easily and well.
We will never be enlightened unless we realize and own what our capacity, from the best of the best to the worst of the worst because then we have more empathy, more compassion, more sympathy for others who do things that are hurtful and harmful and we see, given certain situations, I'm capable of that myself. So, I'm less judgmental.
Life and death are one thread, the same line viewed from different sides.
I have seen white settlers in Africa who had sworn that they would never sit down to table with those "smelly blacks" sit down quite happily with half-nude tribesmen once a country achieves independence. It is the context of power which changes behavior and transmutes antipathy into sympathy.
The most reserved of men, that will not exchange two syllables together in an English coffee-house, should they meet at Ispahan, would drink sherbet and eat a mess of rice together.