Sympathies Quotes & Sayings

If literature has engaged me as a project, first as a reader, then as a writer, it is as an extension of my sympathies to other selves, other domains, other dreams, other territories. — Susan Sontag

We will not refuse to help the helpless or lift up the fallen, but we will reuse to wallow in the mud because of our sympathies. — Ernest Holmes

Love and death are the two great hinges on which all human sympathies turn. — B. R. Hayden

My sympathies are, of course, with the Government side, especially the Anarchists ; for Anarchism seems to me more likely to lead to desirable social change than highly centralized, dictatorial Communism . — Aldous Huxley

There are no personal sympathies in politics. — Margaret Thatcher

How are you to get up the sympathies of the audience in a legitimate manner, if there isn't a little man contending against a big one? — Charles Dickens

Meditation is first quietness. We live in a great din. It is well to see (for who sees it not will have but narrow sympathies and understand little that occurs around him) that the noise is often a noble uproar, "deep calling unto deep," the clamor of wonderful machinery, of great labors, of human struggles, of heroes' voices. But storms, though grand, must sink if the sea is to show the stars. — James Vila Blake

the world was shrinking, sympathies changing; — Barack Obama

For me it is essential to understand that everyone is alone. Not in the sense of loneliness, but rather in the sense that no one can completely understand someone else. I know very well what Diane Arbus means when she says that one cannot crawl into someone else's skin, but there is always an urge to do so anyway. I want to awaken definite sympathies for the person I have photographed. — Rineke Dijkstra

A woman's best qualities do not reside in her intellect, but in her affections. She gives refreshment by her sympathies, rather than by her knowledge. — Samuel Smiles

His wild and enthusiastic imagination was chastened by the sensibility of his heart. His soul overflowed with ardent affections, and his friendship was of that devoted and wondrous nature that the worldly-minded teach us to look for only in the imagination. But even human sympathies were not sufficient to satisfy his eager mind. The scenery of external nature, which others regard only with admiration, he loved with ardour[...] — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

You've been playing on my sympathies as though they were harp strings. You-'
'What do you expect me to do?' he cut in. 'Play fair? With a woman who makes up her own rules as she goes along?'
'I expect you to take no for an answer!'
He rose. 'I should like to know what you're afraid of.'
'Afraid?' Her voice climbed. 'Afraid? Of you?'
'The only reason I can think of for your rejecting an opportunity to run the world as you see fit is fear that you can't manage the man offering the opportunity. — Loretta Chase

Unhand her," said a voice behind her. A voice she had never before thought she would be glad to hear. A voice that was commanding, strong and deep.
Her eyes popped open and she whirled around to find the duke standing right behind her. The man made a grab for her but the duke had already caught her waist and deposited her behind him.
"Let us go and I will not inform the authorities," the duke suggested.
The man sneered, "Lady in mine."
"Dear fellow, I would love to hand you over this young lady with all my sympathies, believe me. But my sister and my mother would have my head. She, you see, belongs to them. — Anya Wylde

Your brother kills you." Fett hopped tpo his feet as lightly as any unarmoured jedi apprentice, the n added," Some things are worsse thean death. I know that better than anyone, except maybe Sintas-and Han Solo. Send your father my sympathies. — Troy Denning

What a proof of the Divine tenderness is there in the human heart itself, which is the organ and receptacle oft so many sympathies! When we consider how exquisite are those conditions by which it is even made capable of so much suffering
the capabilities of a child's heart, of a mother's heart,
what must be the nature of Him who fashioned its depths, and strung its chords. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing.
Methinks, its motion in this hush of nature
Gives it dim sympathies with me who live,
Making it a companionable form,
Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling Spirit
By its own moods interprets, every where
Echo or mirror seeking of itself,
And makes a toy of Thought. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Everyone in the full enjoyment of all the blessings of his life, in his normal condition, feels some individual responsibility forthe poverty of others. When the sympathies are not blunted by any false philosophy, one feels reproached by one's own abundance. — Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Although Wilson proclaimed neutrality, his sympathies, like those of many Americans, lay with Great Britain and France. Americans gratefully remembered crucial French assistance in the American Revolution and shared with the British a language, a culture, and a commitment to liberty. Germany, by contrast, was a monarchy with strong militaristic traditions. — Anonymous

Congratulations Lord Steldor, Princess Alera, my sympathies. — Cayla Kluver

Presentiments are strange things: and so are sympathies; and so are signs; and the three combined make one mystery to which humanity had not yet found the key. — Charlotte Bronte

As man advances in civilization, and small tribes are united into larger communities, the simplest reason would tell each individual that he ought to extend his social instincts and sympathies to all members of the same nation, though personally unknown to him. This point being once reached, there is only an artificial barrier to prevent his sympathies extending to the men of all nations and races. — Charles Darwin

The affections are immortal! They are the sympathies which unite the ceaseless generations. — Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style. — Oscar Wilde

I knew," he continued, "you would do me good in some way, at some time; - I saw it in your eyes when I first beheld you: their expression and smile did not" - (again he stopped) - "did not" (he proceeded hastily) "strike delight to my very inmost heart so for nothing. People talk of natural sympathies; I have heard of good genii: there are grains of truth in the wildest fable. My cherished preserver, goodnight! — Charlotte Bronte

Despite his elegant appearance, Mr. Gweta's most striking asset was his alluring personality. Professor Khupe had met few such men in his life. Their warmth made everyone feel like they were their best friend. They were good men. However, they tended to be morally ambidextrous. If a stranger confessed to having been involved in a horrible crime, they would reserve judgment until they found out whether the confessor was the victim or victimizer. Once they knew, they would immediately lend their sympathies to the confessor's position. Their worldview was simple. They supported the first person to confide in them. Such men made good lawyers. — Taona Dumisani Chiveneko

We must remember, however, that art is of value only to the extent that it speaks to us. It might be a universal language if we ourselves were universal in our sympathies. — Okakura Kakuzo

We read not only because we cannot know enough people, but because friendship is so vulnerable, so likely to diminish or disappear, overcome by space, time, imperfect sympathies, and all the sorrows of familial and passional life. — Harold Bloom

I am in no mood to fulminate on paper
I wish the two of us were in a room together talking of what matters most, the air thick with affinity. In January a man crawls into a cave of hopelessness; he hallucinates sympathies catching fire. Letters are glaciers, null frigates, trapping us where we are in the moment, unable to carry us on toward truth. — Carlene Bauer

As we have seen, Villefort belonged to the nobility of the town and M. Morrel to the plebeian part of it: the former was an extreme Royalist, the latter suspected of harbouring Bonapartist sympathies. Villefort looked contemptuously at Morrel and answered coldly: 'You know, Monsieur, that one can be mild in one's private life, honest in one's business dealings and skilled in one's work, yet at the same time, politically speaking, be guilty of great crimes. — Alexandre Dumas

Let us assume that entertainment is the sole end of reading; even so I think you would hold that no mental employment is so broadening to the sympathies or so enlightening to the understanding. Other pursuits belong not to all times, all ages, all conditions; but this gives stimulus to our youth and diversion to our old age; this adds a charm to success, and offers a haven of consolation to failure. Through the night-watches, on all our journeyings, and in our hours of ease, it is our unfailing companion. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

The serious and critical reader will not want a treacherous impartiality, which offers him a cup of conciliation with a well-settled poison of reactionary hate at the bottom, but a scientific conscientiousness, which for its sympathies and antipathies - open and undisguised - seeks support in an honest study of the facts, a determination of their real connections, an exposure of the causal laws of their movement. — Leon Trotsky

December drops no weak, relenting tear, By our fond summer sympathies ensnared; Nor from the perfect circle of the year Can even winter's crystal gems be spared. — Christopher Pearse Cranch

Then, though I prize my friends, I cannot afford to talk with them and study their visions, lest I lose my own. It would indeed give me a certain household joy to quit this lofty seeking, this spiritual astronomy, or search of stars, and come down to warm sympathies with you; but then I know well I shall mourn always the vanishing of my mighty gods. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

One as deformed and horrible as myself, could not deny herself to me. My companion must be of the same species, and have the same defects ... with whom I can live in the interchange of those sympathies necessary for my being ... — Mary Shelley

Bear in mind, now, that most of this work was done by men who had no intention whatever, when they enlisted, of making war to end slavery. Slavery was killed by the act of war itself. It was the one human institution on all the earth which could not possibly be defended by force of arms, because that force, once called into play, was bound to destroy it. The Union armies which ended slavery were led by men like Grant and Sherman, who had profound sympathies with the South and who had never in their lives shown the slightest sympathies with the abolitionists. But they were also men who believed in the one great, fearful fact about modern war
that when you get into it, the guiding rule is that you have to win it. — Bruce Catton

Sympathy beyond the confines of man, that is humanity to the lower animals, seems to be one of the latest moral acquisitions. It is apparently unfelt by savages, except towards their pets. How little the old Romans knew of it is shewn by their abhorrent gladiatorial exhibitions. The very idea of humanity, as far as I could observe, was new to most of the Gauchos of the Pampas. This virtue, one of the noblest with which man is endowed, seems to arise incidentally from our sympathies becoming more tender and more widely diffused, until they are extended to all sentient beings. As — Charles Darwin

But it seems to me inevitable that any person who gives thoughtful and imaginative attention to literature must be awakened in his sensibilities, enlarged in his sympathies, sharpened in his critical faculties. — Denham Sutcliffe

Show me the manner in which a nation or a community cares for its dead and I will measure with mathematical exactness the tender sympathies of its people, their respect for the laws of the land and their loyalty to high ideals. — William E. Gladstone

In all the wide gamut of human experience, nothing plays so important a part as faith ... Faith that is as broad as the heavens and as wide as the earth. Faith that comprehends in its vast sympathies everything human as well as divine, and carries one with the swift sure wings of the angels directly to his goal. — Alice Foote MacDougall

Our sympathies are most required when they seem least due. — Richard Ford

The instinctive and universal taste of mankind selects flowers for the expression of its finest sympathies, their beauty and their fleetingness serving to make them the most fitting symbols of those delicate sentiments for which language itself seems almost too gross a medium. — George Stillman Hillard

In their sympathies, children feel nearer animals than adults. — Jessamyn West

Instead he gave Cabal his most professional pat on the shoulder. It was his best pat, the one that said, You have my most sincere albeit non-specific sympathies. It was all he could do. — Jonathan L. Howard

It would seem, indeed, that there is in certain men the veritable instinct of a beast, pure and complete like all instinct, which creates antipathies and sympathies, which separates on nature from another for ever, which never hesitates, never is perturbed, never keeps silent, and never admits itself to be in the wrong; clear in its obscurity, infallible, imperious, refractory under all the counsels of intelligence, and all the solvents of reason, and which, whatever may be their destinies, secretly warns the dog-man of the presence of the cat-man and the fox-man of the presence of the lion-man. — Victor Hugo

Holmes. "Why, it might be a description of Watson!" "It's true," said the inspector, with amusement. "It might be a description of Watson." "Well, I'm afraid I can't help you, Lestrade," said Holmes. "The fact is that I knew this fellow Milverton, that I considered him one of the most dangerous men in London, and that I think there are certain crimes which the law cannot touch, and which therefore, to some extent, justify private revenge. No, it's no use arguing. I have made up my mind. My sympathies are with the criminals rather than with the victim, and I will not handle this case." Holmes had not said one word to me about the tragedy which we had witnessed, but I observed all the morning that he was in his most thoughtful mood, and he gave me the impression, from his vacant eyes and his abstracted manner, of a man who — Arthur Conan Doyle

It was great to essentially have two protagonists where you're sympathies could go back and forth between the two of them, throughout the season. — Tony Goldwyn

BABE or BABY, n. A misshapen creature of no particular age, sex, or condition, chiefly remarkable for the violence of the sympathies and antipathies it excites in others, itself without sentiment or emotion. — Ambrose Bierce

Character is the product of daily, hourly actions, words and thoughts: daily forgiveness, unselfishness, kindnesses, sympathies, charities, sacrifices for the good of others, struggles against temptation, submissiveness under trial. It is these, like the blinding colors in a picture, or the blending notes of music, which constitute the person. — John Ross Macduff

The sentiments and opinions these authors express are frequently not acceptable to present-day readers, who have to be often saying to themselves: "This is not true, or not correct, or not in accordance with our beliefs." It is, however, precisely this encounter with the mental states of other generations which enlarges the outlook and sympathies of the cultivated man, and persuades him of the upward tendency of the human race. — Various

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. — Doc Hastings

If Art does not enlarge men's sympathies, it does nothing morally," Eliot once wrote. "The only effect I ardently long to produce by my writings, is that those who read them should be better able to imagine and to feel the pains and the joys of those who differ from themselves in everything but the broad fact of being struggling erring human creatures. — Rebecca Mead

An American Negro, however deep his sympathies, or however bright his rage, ceases to be simply a black man when he faces a black man from Africa. — James A. Baldwin

We can not understand each other, if our sympathies are always safely tucked away; we can not understand each other, if our approaches are always academic or conventional; we can not understand each other, if we crawl back into our shells every time we see a worm across our path. — Ameen Rihani

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. — Shinzo Abe

Can it be possible that all human sympathies can thrive, and all human powers be exercised, and all human joys increase, if we live with all our might with the thirty or forty people next to us, telegraphing kindly to all other people, to be sure? Can it be possible that our passion for large cities, and large parties, and large theatres, and large churches, develops no faith nor hope nor love which would not find aliment and exercise in a little "world of our own"? — Edward Everett Hale

The great scene of grief, in which the wild infant bore a part, had developed all her sympathies; and as her tears fell upon her father's cheek, they were the pledge that she would grow up amid human joy and sorrow, nor for ever do battle with the world, but be a woman in it. Towards her mother, too, Pearl's errand as a messenger of anguish was all fulfilled. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

RULES OF LYING:
1. Figure out your lie before you open your mouth.
2. Play on your opponent's sympathies and weaknesses
3. Dance around the lie with distracting truth. They're far more convincing.
4. Picture the lie in your head as if it were the truth. They want to see how it's coming up.
5. Never forget which is the lie and which is the truth.
6. If you say something that brings you trouble, pretend that was actually the lie. Lie and say you were joking before, and aren't you funny? It's a quick escape from a sticky situation. It's the liars trapdoor.
7. Avoid it if at all possible.
8. Keep up your poker face. Never have a "tell" or a physical gesture that will give yourself away and let your opponent know your bluffing. — Kristin Walker

The unmerciful man is most certainly an unblessed man. His sympathies are all dried up; he is afflicted with a chronic jaundice, and lives timidly and darkly in a little, narrow rat-hole of distrust. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

Since man, fragment of the universe, is governed by the same laws that preside over the heavens, it is by no means absurd to search there above for the themes of our lives, for those frigid sympathies that participate in our achievements as well as our blunderings. — Marguerite Yourcenar

The understatement, the self-ridicule, the delight in the foreignness of foreigners, the complete denial of any attempt to enlist the sympathies of his readers in the hardships he has capriciously invited. — Evelyn Waugh

The first duty of a wise advocate is to convince his opponents that he understands their arguments, and sympathies with their just feelings. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

you away, show where your sympathies lie." Chance laughed — Ciana Stone

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. — Jim Garrison

Our age is pre-eminently the age of sympathy, as the eighteenth century was the age of reason. Our ideal men and women are they, whose sympathies have had the widest culture, whose aims do not end with self, whose philanthropy, though centrifugal, reaches around the globe. — Frances E. Willard

Sympathies that lie too deep for words, too deep almost for thoughts, are touched, at such times, by other charms than those which the senses feel and which the resources of expression can realise. — Wilkie Collins

Real culture lives by sympathies and admirations, not by dislikes and disdains; under all misleading wrappings it pounces unerringly upon the human core. — William James

The foundation upon which our nation stands is much richer and firmer than the sympathies that may occasionally divide us. And we never know this more truly than in Christmas time. In good times or in bad, under clear skies or under the shadow of uncertainty, the Christmas message is the imperishable one of joy, hope and brotherhood. — Ferdinand Marcos

I thought that perhaps the most creative mix for a society would be nine parts solid worker from institutions like MIT to one part poet from Marrakech, but in spite of the fact that I myself had been trained to be one of the solid workers, which meant that all of my sympathies lay with that group, I would not surrender the poet. The problem was to find him. — James A. Michener

I want to be alone. Sympathies wasted on my hollow shell. I feel there's nothing left to fight for. No reason for a cause. — Sarah McLachlan

she clutched her purse and was completely composed, gracefully accepting people's sympathies, but when they started to shovel the dirt over old dick's coffin she began to weep, and her grief was strong enough to chase the sparrows from the trees. — Alice Hoffman

It is an exquisite and beautiful thing in our nature, that, when the heart is touched and softened by some tranquil happiness or affectionate feeling, the memory of the dead comes over it most powerfully and irresistibly. It would seem almost as though our better thoughts and sympathies were charms, in virtue of which the soul is enabled to hold some vague and mysterious intercourse with the spirits of those whom we loved in life. Alas! how often and how long may these patient angels hover around us, watching for the spell which is so soon forgotten! — Charles Dickens

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. — Salman Rushdie

half Scottish, respectable, and imbued with the powerful emotional restraint that those races have inherited somehow (via God knows what route) from the Spartans. It was a matter of self-conquest, refusal to show weakness, refusal to become a burden to others. This inheritance does not diminish one's natural sympathies, it merely makes them harder to express and to receive, and it is a legacy which it is extremely hard to unlearn. — Louis De Bernieres

He had no longer free energy enough for spontaneous research and speculative thinking, but by the bedside of patients the direct external calls on his judgment and sympathies brought the added impulse needed to draw him out of himself. It was not simply that beneficent harness of routine which enables silly men to live respectably and unhappy men to live calmly - it was a perpetual claim on the immediate fresh application of thought, and on the consideration of another's need and trial. Many of us looking back through life would say that the kindest man we have ever known has been a medical man, or perhaps that surgeon whose fine tact, directed by deeply-informed perception, has come to us in our need with a more sublime beneficence than that of miracle-workers. Some of that twice-blessed mercy was always with Lydgate in his work at the Hospital or in private houses, serving better than any opiate to quiet and sustain him under anxieties and his sense of mental degeneracy. — George Eliot

...the experience of reading a novel has certain qualities that remind us of the traditional apprehension of mythology. It can be seen as a form of meditation. Readers have to live with a novel for days or even weeks. It projects them into another world, parallel to but apart from their ordinary lives. They know perfectly well that this fictional realm is not 'real' and yet while they are reading it becomes compelling. A powerful novel becomes part of the backdrop of our lives, long after we have laid the book asie. It is an exercise of make-believe that, like yoga or a religious festival, breaks down barriers of space and time and extends our sympathies, so that we are able to empathise with others lives and sorrows. It teaches compassion, the ability to 'feel with' others. And, like mythology, an important novel is transformative. If we allow it to do so, it can change us forever. — Karen Armstrong

Although Martin Luther's theological message was couched as an exhortation to all Christian people, his frame of reference, the human experiences on which he drew and his emotional sympathies, or almost entirely German. — Andrew Pettegree

Away, down below now, single file on the path, comes a woman with four girls in tow, all of them in shirtwaist dresses. Seen from above this way they are pale, doomed blossoms, bound to appeal to your sympathies. Be careful. Later on you'll have to decide what sympathy they deserve. — Barbara Kingsolver

When two members of a family or two intimate friends are separated, and one goes abroad and one remains at home, the return of the relative or friend who has been travelling always seems to place the relative or friend who has been staying at home at a painful disadvantage when the two first meet. The sudden encounter of the new thoughts and new habits eagerly gained in the one case, with the old thoughts and old habits passively preserved in the other, seems at first to part the sympathies of the most loving relatives and the fondest friends, and to set a sudden strangeness, unexpected by both and uncontrollable by both, between them on either side. — Wilkie Collins

Our science, so called, is always more barren and mixed with error than our sympathies. — Henry David Thoreau

Crowds exhibit a docile respect for force, And are but slightly impressed by kindness, Which for them is scarcely other than a form of weakness. Their sympathies have never been bestowed upon easy going masters, but the tyrants who vigorously oppressed them. It is to these latter that they always erect the loftiest statues. It is true that they willingly trample on the despot whom they have stripped of his power, but it is because having lost his power he resumes his place among the feeble who are to be despised because they are not to be feared. The type of hero dear to a crowd will always have the semblance of a Caesar, His insignia attract them, His authority overawes them, and his sword instils them with fear. — Gustave Le Bon

To us, our house was not unsentient matter
it had a heart, and a soul, and eyes to see us with; and approvals and solicitudes and deep sympathies; it was of us, and we were in its confidence, and lived in its grace and in the peace of its benediction. — Mark Twain

God sends children for another purpose than merely to keep up the race
to enlarge our hearts, to make us unselfish, and full of kindly sympathies and affections. — Mary Howitt

I gave up trying to establish where progress lay, and where revolution, or to see the plot
as Amparo's [Brazilian] comrades expressed it
of capitalism. How could I continue to think like a European once I learned that the hopes of the far left were kept alive by a Nordeste bishop suspected of having harbored Nazi sympathies in his youth but who now faithfully and fearlessly held high the torch of revolt, upsetting the wary Vatican and the barracudas of Wall Street, and joyfully inflaming the atheism of the proletarian mystics won over by the tender yet menacing banner of a Beautiful Lady who, pierced by seven sorrows, gazed down on the sufferings of her people? — Umberto Eco

Whether I am or am not a Communist is irrelevant. The question is whether American citizens, regardless of their political beliefs or sympathies, may enjoy their constitutional rights. — Paul Robeson

The existing principle of selfish interest and competition has been carried to its extreme point; and, in its progress, has isolated the heart of man, blunted the edge of his finest sensibilities, and annihilated all his most generous impulses and sympathies. — Frances Wright

A multichild household is a pit of petty jealousies, this I knew, and the Nash children were panicking at the idea of competing not just with one another, but with a dead sister. They had my sympathies. — Gillian Flynn

You are too kind, my lady. Indeed, you are the most amiable Englishwoman I have ever met."
She laughed. The viscount was rapidly rising on her list. "Some people don't find me amiable." Like a certain unfeeling Bow Street Runner.
He struck a hand to his chest. "I cannot believe that! You are such an alma brilhante ... a bright soul. How can anyone not see it?"
She grinned at him. "They must all be blind."
"And deaf." He tapped his temple. "And not very right in the head."
"Excellent, my lord," she said. "Your grasped that idiom quite well."
He looked surprised by that, then smiled. "I have to learn if I am to impress the senhora."
She cast him a coy glance. "And why would you want to impress me, sir?"
Picking up her hand, he pressed a kiss to it again and this time didn't release it. "Why would I not?" His wistful expression tugged at her sympathies.
"You'd better eat your eggs before they get cold," she said, gently withdrawing her hand. — Sabrina Jeffries

No artist desires to prove anything. Even things that are true can be proved. No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style. No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express everything. — Victor Hugo

How narrow we selfish conceited creatures are in our sympathies! How blind to the rights of all the rest of creation! — John Muir

Life is like a cloud. It comes in a million shapes and sizes and it offers no guarantees, no sympathies for the man who told his kid he'd fly a kite today, no consideration for the girl who was sure she'd see the sun today, no promises for the weary world and the wants wants wants of which it has too many today. Life is like that. — Tahereh Mafi

He liked to be kindly treated, to be praised and petted, to be well fed and caressed; and they who so treated him were his chosen friends. He had in this the instincts of a horse, not approaching the higher sympathies of a dog. — Anthony Trollope

No, never mind, I didn't think so. Mead, Dante's theme is man-not a man.' Lowell said finally with a mild patience that he reserved only for students. "The Italians forever twitch at Dante's sleeves trying to make him say he is of their politics and their way of thinking. Their way indeed! To confine it to Florence or Italy is to banish it from the sympathies of mankind. We read Paradise Lost as a poem but Dante's Comedy as a chronicle of our inner lives. Do you boys know of Isaiah 38:10 — Matthew Pearl

It is quite an achievement. People of liberal sympathies, stupefied by relativism, have become the apologists for a creedal wave that is racist, misogynist, homophobic, imperialist, and genocidal. To put it another way, they are up the arse of those that want them dead. — Martin Amis

If Sally had been in an accident or come down with some overtly physical disease, I would not hesitate to tell him about it, confident that his sympathies would flow in my direction as a matter of course. But psychosis defies empathy; few people who have not experienced it up close buy the idea of a behavioral disease. It has the ring of an excuse, a license for self-absorption on the most extreme scale. It suggests that one chooses madness and not the other way around. (86) — Michael Greenberg

Well, I'm not sure where this puts me, Sire. I mean, at least with the others I know what's expected. I don't have to tiptoe around their sympathies, only their egos--for a short time." I grimaced. "No one is feeling sorry for me, but me. No one is asking me to feel things that...I do not wish to feel for them. — Amie O'Brien

Your mother sounds like a formidable woman," Valek said into the silence.
"You have no idea," Leif replied with a sigh.
"Well, if she's anything like Yelena, my deepest sympathies," Valek teased.
"Hey!"
Leif laughed and the tense moment dissipated.
Valek handed Leif his machete. "Do you know how to use it?"
"Of course. I chopped Yelena's bow into firewood," Leif joked. — Maria V. Snyder

Somewhere in the distance he could hear a wireless playing Judy Garland's 'Over the Rainbow.' Wolf had seen the film but, had he been the one swept up to the magical land of Oz, he would have raised an army of flying monkeys, stuck the witches in a concentration camp, razed the Emerald City to the ground and executed the wizard for communist sympathies, being a Jew, a homosexual, intellectually retarded, or all of the above.
He did like the tune, though. — Lavie Tidhar

People talk of natural sympathies ; I have heard of good genii ; there are grains of truth in the wildest fable. — Charlotte Bronte

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. — Robert P. McCulloch

You can't run a business based on sympathies; otherwise our business would be hampered. — Marc Rich