concept

sympathy Quotes

30 of the best book quotes about sympathy
01
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“Reader, it is not to awaken sympathy for myself that I am telling you truthfully what I suffered in slavery. I do it to kindle a flame of compassion in your hearts for my sisters who are still in bondage, suffering as I once suffered.”
Harriet Ann Jacobs
author
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
book
compassion
sympathy
telling your story
pain and suffering
speaking the truth
concepts
02
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“There’s nothing like your mother’s sympathetic voice to make you want to burst into tears.”
Parents
person
Rebecca Bloomwood
Jane Bloomwood
characters
mothers
sympathy
concepts
03
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“The fact is, I was sick, but not in an easily explained flu kind of way. It’s my experience that people are a lot more sympathetic if they can see you hurting, and for the millionth time in my life I wish for measles or smallpox or some other recognizable disease just to make it simple for me and also for them.”
04
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“I did not want to be a hero. I did not want to make any of what had happened in the last week about me. There was a guy who’d just spent six days in the hospital because the guy who’d been my personal hero for four years had put him there.”
05
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“I drag myself out of nightmares each morning and find there’s no relief in waking.”
06
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“Though sympathy can’t alter facts, it can help to make them more bearable.”
07
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“It is very difficult for a man to differentiate between empathy and sympathy. He hates to be pitied.”
08
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“I am black; I am in total fusion with the world, in sympathetic affinity with the earth, losing my id in the heart of the cosmos -- and the white man, however intelligent he may be, is incapable of understanding Louis Armstrong or songs from the Congo. ”
09
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“In every century, and ever since England has been what it is, an Englishman has always felt somewhat ashamed of his own emotion and of his own sympathy.”
10
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“I am sad for the dead and I am sad for the living”
11
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“She asked me to make a copy of her key. I was happy for her. That she wouldn’t be alone anymore. It’s not that I felt sorry for myself. And yet. I made two copies. One I gave to her, and one I kept. For a long time I carried it in my pocket. To pretend.”
12
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″ Balls to your sorry ... Ka works and the world moves on. ”
13
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“Oh, damn sympathy. There is a great deal too much of that sort of thing going on nowadays.”
14
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“I must add, too, that the only purpose of the book is to solve the intellectual problem raised by suffering; for the far higher task of teaching fortitude and patience I was never fool enough to suppose myself qualified, nor have I anything to offer my readers except my conviction that when pain is to be borne, a little courage helps more than much knowledge, a little human sympathy more than much courage, and the least tincture of the love of God more than all. ”
15
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“I’m not looking for sympathy. I’m far more interested in symmetry.”
16
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“I didn’t know what to say. I mean, what can you say when you’ve just found out your friend’s a liar! Nancy washed her hands and face. I handed her two paper towels to dry herself. “Are you okay?” I asked. I felt kind of sorry for Nancy then. I want my period too, but not enough to lie about it.”
17
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“It’ll be a fierce battle today, and we must be ready for the wounded, poor creatures.”
18
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″‘I know,’ says Dog. He is silent for a moment, then he says, ‘I am blind in one eye, but life is still good.‘”
Fox
book
Dog
character
19
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Meet the feisty Clarice Bean and sympathize with her search for just a little peace and quiet amidst a family many of us will recognize only too well. The witty text and jazzy illustrations capture the wonderful wacky chaos of a large extended family from the hilarious vantage point of one of its youngest members.
20
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“Poor Simon Shaw. He’s gone downhill a lot, hasn’t he?”
21
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″‘He’s already lacking a finger. He has stolen before. He must have known the punishment. If he valued his hand so much, why did he steal?’ ‘How do we know? How do we know what has driven the poor wretch to steal? How do we know what he has to bear?‘”
22
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“Poor Percy! And poor Percy’s bed! “My bed is too small for all these animals!” then, bump! The cover roll right off the bed and everybody falls onto the floor.”
23
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“She had the power of silent sympathy. That sounds rather dull, I know, but it’s not so dull as it sounds. It just means that a person is able to know that you are unhappy, and to love you extra on that account, without bothering you by telling you all the time how sorry she is for you.”
24
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“people are blunt with one another, sometimes even cruel, believing honesty is stronger medicine than sympathy, which may console but often conceals.”
25
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“Yes, I’m afraid it’s true, Amaryllis. Your father was killed. It happened in a timber accident, in New Guinea. It’s dangerous work, timber milling. I want you to know you have my deepest sympathy. I’ll be happy to do all I can for you. As a friend, you know, my dear, not just as a solicitor.”
26
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“Doc would listen to any kind of nonsense and turn it into wisdom. His mind had no horizon - and his sympathy had no warp. He could talk to children, telling them very profound things so that they understood. He lived in a world of wonders, of excitement. He was concupiscent as a rabbit and gentle as hell. Everyone who knew him was indebted to him. And everyone who thought of him thought next, ‘I really must do something nice for Doc.”
27
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″‘If you meant that you have come for breakfast, I fear that I have nothing left but half a pound of mustard.’ She put her hand on the bottle-green sleeve and made him drop the bag. The reference to breakfast had touched her, for she knew he seldom had enough to eat.”
28
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“Maddy squeezed Jeremy’s arm sympathetically, for she knew it was hard for him to hear that this poor specimen would have the opportunity that he longed for in vain.”
29
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″‘Oh you poor little wooden horse!’ she said. ‘I could never, never take you away from your master!‘”
30
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″‘Poor little kitten,’ he thought again- and ‘poor little kitten’ suddenly gave him a hearty push which sent him off the wagon like a bag of flour.”

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