Sympathy Vs Empathy Quotes

Sympathy is to love thy neighbor. Empathy is to leave her alone. ~ Anthony Marais

Sympathy is a characteristic trait of politicians and empathy an emotion of the masses. ~ Amit Abraham

Upstairs when someone for any reason is unable to state his particular reasons for existing, or stake a position, say, on the United States vs. Vietnam youthful enthusiasm vs. boredom scathing denunciation vs. racist exploitation the dollar-for-dollar precipitous decline of all sympathy and mercy . . . someone else gives up seeking the difference between things that could've been and weren't and things that didn't have to be but were. ~ Philip Schultz

-BDB on the board-
Knitter's Anonimous
May 8, 2006
Rhage (in his bedroom posting in V's room on the board)
Hi, my name is V.
("Hi, V")
I've been knitting for 125 years now.
(*gasping noises*)
It's begun to impact my personal relationships: my brothers think I'm a nancy. It's begun to affect my health: I'm getting a callus on my forefinger and I find bits of yarn in all my pockets and I'm starting to smell like wool. I can't concentrate at work: I keep picturing all these lessers in Irish sweaters and thick socks.
(*sounds of sympathy*)
I've come seeking a community of people who, like me, are trying not to knit.
Can you help me?
(*We're with you*)
Thank you (*takes out hand-knitted hankie in pink*)
(*sniffles*)
("We embrace you, V")

Vishous (in the pit): Oh hell no...you did not just put that up. And nice spelling in the title. Man...you just have to roll up on me, don't you. I got four words for you, my brother.

Rhage: Four words? Okay...lemme see... Rhage, you're so sexy.
hmmm....
Rhage, you're SO smart. No wait! Rhage, you're SO right! That's it, isn't it...g'head. You can tell me.

Vishous: First one starts with a "P"
Use your head for the other three.
Bastard.

Rhage: P? Hmm... Please pass the yarn

Vishous: Payback is a bitch!

Rhage: Ohhhhhhhhhhhh
I'm so scuuuuuurred.
Can you whip me up a blanket to h ~ J.R. Ward

Faith, sympathy - fiery faith and fiery sympathy! Life is nothing, death is nothing, hunger nothing, cold nothing. Glory unto the Lord - march on, the Lord is our General. Do not look back to see who falls - forward - onward! Thus and thus we shall go on, brethren. One falls, and another takes up the work ~ Swami Vivekananda

Were we incapable of empathy – of putting ourselves in the position of others and seeing that their suffering is like our own – then ethical reasoning would lead nowhere. If emotion without reason is blind, then reason without emotion is impotent. ~ Peter Singer

If something doesnt feel normal to me, it must be wrong. Failing to have a shred of imaginative empathy is a virtue! ~ Gavin McInnes

You can't write about the past and ignore religion. It was such a fundamental, mind-shaping, driving force for pre-modern societies. I'm very interested in what religion does to us - its capacity to create love and empathy or hatred and violence. ~ Geraldine Brooks

At first, sending the confession by real mail had felt like a genius device. I would not have to sit by my phone and watch for the signs that indicated it had been sent and seen. Slim but solid paper would, I hoped, convey me better. Now I had to consider the very real frailties of the system. Ludicrous, in fact, to entrust something of such magnitude to a mailman. A perfect stranger. I looked up stories of nefarious New York mailmen. There was one who has willfully upturned the lives of ordinary people like myself by hoarding 40,000 pieces of undelivered mail. The city was crawling with thieves and malcontents. ~ Olivia Sudjic

Love is the only thing that has a perennial root, and that death cannot touch. It is the spirit that constitutes the central influence of human sympathy, of love, of love untarnished, untouched: and when you arise in the other sphere you will find that your personal identity will be that identity which is framed round about the great, glowing, central, summer influence of Love. ~ Henry Ward Beecher

The light has gone out of my life. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

After American titan and presidential father Joseph P. Kennedy suffered a stroke that impacted one side of his body, guests pretended not to notice the impact. Jackie Kennedy, however, held the impacted hand and kissed the affected side of his face, facing his disability and giving him the courage to do so. ~ Sally Bedell Smith

Pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy ... , indicated by five (or more) of the following: 1. An exaggerated sense of self-importance ... 2. Preoccupation with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love 3. Believes that he or she is "special" and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people ... 4. Requires excessive admiration 5. Has a sense of entitlement ... 6. Selfishly takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends 7. Lacks empathy 8. Is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him or her 9. Shows arrogant, haughty, patronizing, or contemptuous behaviors or attitudes ~ Jon Krakauer

My landscapes are not only beautiful, or nostalgic, with a Romantic or classical suggestion of lost Paradises, but above all 'untruthful.' By 'untruthful,' I mean the glorifying way we look at Nature. Nature, which in all its forms is always against us, because it knows no meaning, no pity, no sympathy, because it knows nothing and is absolutely mindless, the total antithesis of ourselves. ~ Gerhard Richter

That is another theme in the book [Dreams from My Father]. How do we exercise more empathy in our public discourse? How do we get the black to see through the eyes of the white? Or the citizen to see through the eyes of the immigrant? Or the straight to see through the eyes of the gay? That has always been a struggle in our politics. ~ Barack Obama

Anyone who has experienced a certain amount of loss in their life has empathy for those who have experienced loss. ~ Anderson Cooper

An individual is a complex, indefinable object. And so only the individual possesses something that can without lying be called existence. As the Cynic philosophers already knew, nothing real, nothing concrete is definable.

The necessities of thought, speech, of science and action force us to act as if the definable exists. Let us consent to this, while all the while smiling at the inevitable.

But we should never forget that no word can give us the essence of a being, not even my own essence, and that no thought, whatever good will and sympathy might animate it, will ever penetrate the essence of another. Our most beautiful, strongest, most penetrating truths glory - modestly - in being but lesser lies.

The more I strive to seize the concrete, the more my formulas become complex and hesitant, then the more I become irritated at not being able to make them flexible and mobile. Whenever I pronounce absolute words I know I am speaking in the abstract and that I am speaking of the void. ~ Han Ryner

People will provide judgment, intuition, empathy, a moral compass, and human creativity. ~ Walter Isaacson

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

Distinction is purchased at the expense of sympathy ~ Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Filmmaking is challenging for men and women. In both cases, it is incredibly difficult. And gender is neither a guarantee of greater sensitivity, capacity for empathy or aperture. ~ Claudia Llosa

she was exaggerating the severity of her condition in order to crave sympathy. Yet ~ John Van Der Kiste

Personal sympathy has helped me on very much. My husband from first to last has watched every picture with delight, and it is my daily habit to run to him with every glass upon which a fresh glory is newly stamped, and to listen to his enthusiastic applause. This habit of running into the dining-room with my wet pictures has stained such an immense quantity of table linen with nitrate of silver, indelible stains, that I should have been banished from any less indulgent household. ~ Julia Margaret Cameron

Good change-management
requires the right mix of urgency and empathy. ~ A.J. Sheppard

The room was very quiet with that familiar deepening that arrives when something is happening underneath, beyond the words. ~ Bonnie Badenoch

After the Ankara bombings on October 10, people were asked to hold a minute of silence, but many refused. Our society can't even unite in grief to honor the victims. We've lost our empathy. That's maybe the worst. ~ Elif Safak

It is a pretty trick of authors to make nature ever in sympathy with man, but as a matter of fact she seldom is. ~ Gertrude Atherton

The memories are always with us, but sometimes we can ease the way for others. That is what we must do, use our pain to build understanding and empathy, not to build walls. Then it is transformed into a thing of beauty, then our suffering has value. ~ Rachel Linden

But you must love with a high, serious intimate sympathy, with a will, with intelligence, and you must always seek to know more thoroughly, better, and more. ~ Vincent Van Gogh

Sympathy is something that shouldn't be bestowed upon the Yankees. Apparently it angers them. ~ Bob Feller

A child's eyes, those clear, wells of undefiled thought - what on earth can be more beautiful? Full of hope, love and curiosity, they meet your own. In prayer, how earnest; in joy, how sparkling; in sympathy, how tender! The man who never tried the companionship of a little child has carelessly passed by one of the great pleasures of life, as one passes a rare flower without plucking it or knowing its value ~ Caroline Norton

Empathy is what separates human beings from teenage boys. ~ Victor LaValle

'Sympathy for the Devil' is just another way of saying 'Compassionate Conservative'. ~ Stephen Colbert

You're part of the human fabric of experience. You don't have to have cancer to write about cancer. You don't have to have somebody close to you die to understand what death is. Definitely, the more you live, the more experiences fall into your spectrum. As a writer, you must have been told: Write about what you know. But Kafka didn't. Gogol didn't. Did Shakespeare write only what he knew? Our own selves are limitless. And our capacity for empathy is giant. ~ Regina Spektor

If someone with a high level of authority were to ask me, "Suzy, how can we make people so incredibly stupid and apathetic, so that we can do whatever we want without scrutiny?" I would say, "Go for the gut. Pollute the gut. The gut is the seat of all feeling. If you pollute the gut, you corrupt the mind. If you corrupt their minds, their hearts will turn dark. And without light inside their hearts, they will be too blind to see their conscience. ~ Suzy Kassem

Open your eyes and look for some man, or some work for the sake of men, which needs a little time, a little friendship, a little sympathy, a little sociability, a little human toil ... It is needed in every nook and corner. Therefore search and see if there is not some place where you may invest your humanity. ~ Albert Schweitzer

I familiarize myself with every detail of their crimes and loathe what they did. At the same time, I may feel tremendous empathy and sorrow for what they went through in their young lives that contributed to their adult behavior ~ John E. Douglas

Racism is, among other things, the unearned skepticism of one group of humans joined to the unearned sympathy for another. ~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

When God elected to give us free will, he accepted that he would also suffer. ~ Brian Bennudriti

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. ~ Willa Cather

I am that woman...
A woman with compassion and empathy
An alluring woman whose beauty emanates from the inside
A woman of courage and perseverance
A woman gifted with many talents
A woman who has so much to give and know where she is going
A woman who is everything but lost without you. ~ Julie Cox

It was my teacher's genius, her quick sympathy, her loving tact
which made the first years of my education so beautiful. It was
because she seized the right moment to impart knowledge that made
it so pleasant and acceptable to me. She realized that a child's
mind is like a shallow brook which ripples and dances merrily
over the stony course of its education and reflects here a
flower, there a bush, yonder a fleecy cloud; and she attempted to
guide my mind on its way, knowing that like a brook it should be
fed by mountain streams and hidden springs, until it broadened
out into a deep river, capable of reflecting in its placid
surface, billowy hills, the luminous shadows of trees and the
blue heavens, as well as the sweet face of a little flower.
Any teacher can take a child to the classroom, but not every
teacher can make him learn. He will not work joyously unless he
feels that liberty is his, whether he is busy or at rest; he must
feel the flush of victory and the heart-sinking of disappointment
before he takes with a will the tasks distasteful to him and
resolves to dance his way bravely through a dull routine of
textbooks.
My teacher is so near to me that I scarcely think of myself apart
from her. How much of my delight in all beautiful things is
innate, and how much is due to her influence, I can never tell. I
feel that her being is inseparab ~ Helen Keller

Home is the dearest spot on earth, and it should be the centre, though not the boundary, of the affections. ~ Mary Baker Eddy

Sunset's the best time to take a stroll down Mouffetard, the ancient Via Mons Cetardus. The buildings along it are only two or three stories high. Many are crowned with conical dovecotes. Nowhere in Paris is the connection, the obscure kinship, between houses very close to each other more perceptible to the pedestrian than in this street.

Close in age, not location. If one of them should show signs of decrepitude, if its face should sag, or it should lose a tooth, as it were, a bit of cornicing, within hours its sibling a hundred metres away, but designed according to the same plans and built by the same men, will also feel it's on its last legs.

The houses vibrate in sympathy like the chords of a viola d'amore. Like cheddite charges giving each other the signal to explode simultaneously. ~ Jacques Yonnet

It's hard to pull apart empathy from compassion. What is really clear is that we innately care for other people at least to some extent. ~ Paul Bloom

Boys are suffering, in the modern world. They are more disobedient - negatively - or more independent - positively - than girls, and they suffer for this, throughout their pre-university educational career. They are less agreeable (agreeableness being a personality trait associated with compassion, empathy and avoidance of conflict) and less susceptible to anxiety and depression,172 at least after both sexes hit puberty.173 Boys' interests tilt towards things; girls' interests tilt towards people.174 Strikingly, these differences, strongly influenced by biological factors, are most pronounced in the Scandinavian societies where gender-equality has been pushed hardest: this is the opposite of what would be expected by those who insist, ever more loudly, that gender is a social construct. It isn't. This isn't a debate. The data are in. ~ Jordan B. Peterson

If language was given to men to conceal their thoughts, then gesture's purpose was to disclose them. ~ John Napier

People ask me, 'Who is your hero?'
My answer, my true answer, is that I am my hero, the me I aspire to be, the very best at everything I put my hand to, treating people with dignity and respect because it's the right thing to do, surmounting obstacles with justice and empathy and compassion. I don't need anyone else to live my life for me, to mold me, to tell me what is or isn't possible. I don't need a path to follow.
I create my own path. I live up to my own dreams. I demand greatness of mind, body, and spirit, not someone else's, but my own.
I am my own hero. Are you yours? ~ Chris Kluwe

I traffic in empathy. I try to be vulnerable with people so they can be vulnerable back. I've always been searching for empathy in other people. It's when I feel most not alone. ~ Jose Antonio Vargas

Uriah gave a kind of snivel. I think to express sympathy. ~ Charles Dickens

When absorbing the sadness of the loss, we must concentrate on bad guys to demonize, or black holes of sympathy in which we get to play the cosmic victim of terrible circumstances. Demonizing and victimizing are the sources of those stories in which we can get so woefully stuck ~ John P. Schuster