Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Related Quotes

William Cowper

There is in souls a sympathy with sounds, and as the mind is pitch’d, the ear is pleas’d with melting airs or martial, brisk, or grave; some chord in unison with what we hear is touch’d within us, and the heart replies.

Character | Grave | Heart | Mind | Sympathy |

Tyron Edwards

Quiet and sincere sympathy is often the most welcome and efficient consolation to the afflicted. Said a wise man to one in deep sorrow, "I did not come to comfort you; God only can do that; but I did come to say how deeply and tenderly I feel for you in your affliction."

Affliction | Character | Comfort | Consolation | God | Man | Quiet | Sorrow | Sympathy | Wise | God |

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

One is led astray alike by sympathy and coldness, by praise and by blame.

Blame | Character | Praise | Sympathy |

Lucy R. Goodwin

Words of understanding and sympathy are wonderful instruments for unlocking the hearts and minds of men. They transcend all cultures, turning strangers into brothers, blotting out tolerance and discrimination.

Character | Men | Sympathy | Understanding | Wisdom | Words |

David Hume

If we compare all these circumstances, we shall not doubt, that sympathy is the chief source of moral distinctions.

Character | Circumstances | Doubt | Sympathy |

Martin Luther King, Jr.

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

Character | Giving | Little | Pity | Soul | Sympathy |

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Our sympathy is never very deep unless founded on our own feelings. We pity, but do not enter in to the grief which we have never felt.

Character | Feelings | Grief | Pity | Sympathy |

Theodore T. Munger

Life is given for wisdom, and yet we are not wise; for goodness, and we are not good; for overcoming evil, and evil remains; for patience and sympathy and love, and yet we are fretful and hard and weak and selfish. We are keyed not to attainment, but to struggle toward it.

Attainment | Character | Evil | Good | Life | Life | Love | Patience | Struggle | Sympathy | Wisdom | Wise |

Emily Post, born Emily Price

The attributes of a great lady may still be found in the rule of the four S's: Sincerity, Simplicity, Sympathy and Serenity.

Character | Rule | Serenity | Simplicity | Sincerity | Sympathy |

Madame Swetchine, fully Anne Sophie Swetchine née Sophia Petrovna Soïmonov or Soymanof

The world has no sympathy with any but positive griefs. It will pity you for what you lose; never for what you lack.

Character | Pity | Sympathy | Will | World |

Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton

The true proof of the inherent nobleness of our common nature is in the sympathy it betrays with what is noble whenever crowds are collected. Never believe the world base; if it were so, no society could hold together for a day.

Day | Nature | Society | Sympathy | Wisdom | World | Society |

Anne Conway

(Mathematical Division of Things, is never made in Minima; but Things may be Physically divided into their least parts; as when Concrete Matter is so far divided that it departs into Physical Monades, as it was in the first State of its Materiality...) Moreover the consideration of this Infinite Divisibility of every thing, into parts always less, is no unnecessary or unprofitable Theory, but a thing of great moment; viz. that thereby may be understood the Reasons and Causes of Things; and how all Creatures from the highest to the lowest are inseparably united with one another, by means of Subtiler Parts interceding or coming in between, which are the Emanations of one Creature into another, by which also they act one upon another at the greatest distance; and this is the Foundation of all Sympathy and Antipathy which happens in Creatures: And if these things be well understood of any one, he may easily see into the most secret and hidden Causes of Things, which ignorant Men call occult Qualities.

Consideration | Means | Men | Qualities | Sympathy | Wisdom |

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

The sympathy of most people consists of a mixture of good-humor, curiosity, and self-importance.

Curiosity | Good | Humor | People | Self | Sympathy | Wisdom |

Charles Hanford Henderson

The busy world sometimes forgets that we need sympathy in our happiness as well as in our sorrow.

Need | Sorrow | Sympathy | Wisdom | World | Happiness |

James Russell Lowell

The more sympathies we gain or awaken for what is beautiful, by so much deeper will be our sympathy for that which is most beautiful, the human soul.

Soul | Sympathy | Will | Wisdom |