Sympathy | Quotes On Sympathy | Sympathy Messages | Quotations

Sympathy is a sense of pity and an ancillary feature of kind-heartedness. It is an extension to the virtue of generosity. The sight of helpless living beings in a state of grave peril certainly evokes a sudden sense of ruth in the mind of humane souls.

It is quite possible that with no apparent reason one can nurture a good opinion or a positive feeling about somebody or even animal or a plant. Existence of love, affection or fondness breeds pitifulness. When the nexus of love grows stronger, the underlying sense of pity too gets strengthened substantially.

What Is Sympathy?

Sympathy is the favourable feeling about a living being that is helplessly stuck up in a situation. There is a possibility for developing soft corner about the person who seems to be in a really pathetic condition. Sympathy prompts to go to the rescue of an individual, to go to the root of his sufferings, to cognize the enormity of his grief and to explore the possibility of lending a helping hand for eventual total remedy to the hardships.

The more the seriousness of the problem, more would be the intensity of sympathy. A person who has just met with a road accident sustaining fatal injuries is more likely to evoke an immediate act of practical help than a man suffering from common cold. A helpless cancer patient elicits more passionate supportive gesture than an individual undergoing treatment for mild fever. When a person is rapidly approaching the brink of death in an utterly helpless situation, he is more likely to stoke stronger pangs of sympathy.

What Ignites Sympathy?

In order to ignite sympathy, a man should either be closely related to the observer, or his dear friend or totally a strange person entangled in an utterly helpless life-threatening situation left with a very short time to live. The graveness of the problem need not always be associated to the life risk, it could even be acute poverty, pauperization etc. The practical aspect of sympathy comes into picture when the sufferer becomes absolutely defenceless. If the concern for the well-being for everybody prevails in our mind, we tend to extend practical help to the hapless victims.

Best Example Of Sympathy:

A great incident of in the life of Gautam Buddha, the founder of Buddhism and great sagacious preacher of non-violence, describes how the helplessness of a victim educes sympathy.

Gautam Buddha was born as prince to the king Shuddhodana and the queen Mayadevi in 563 B.C. in the kingdom of Kapilavastu. When he was born after many years of despair suffered by his parents due to childlessness, he was nurtured by his parents with deep emotions of love and affection. His initial name was Siddhartha. Paying heed to the prediction of the royal astrologer that Siddhartha would either become a victorious King or a brilliant sage, the king Shuddhodana took every care to ensure that Siddhartha enjoyed all the worldly pleasures in royal stature and not a slight trace of spiritual ascetism entered the prince’s mind. Siddhartha grew up well happily in his boyhood relishing the luxurious life that his royal status had brought to him. Amid plenty of love and endearment from his parents and all the people around him, Siddhartha developed in his mind the positive thoughts of love, kindness and compassion for others. He played joyfully in the company of his cousins, friends and his teammates. The magnitude of affectionate attention received by Siddhartha became the prime cause of jealousy for his cousin by name Devadatta. One day, Siddhartha was playing happily with his friends by the shore of a pond in the royal palace.

Suddenly, much to his pleasant surprise, a group of white swans flew down and began swimming in the pond waters. The beauty of impeccable whiteness of swans held Siddhartha awe-struck and he kept watching the playful birds without batting an eye lid. Every act of the birds, be it splashing the waters or twisting their long supple necks to preen their plumes with their red beaks, was a pleasant sight to watch and it was really a spectacular feast to the eyes. As if to disturb the tranquility, then came down an arrow from nowhere, tearing through the air and got planted itself on one of the swans in the pond. Unable to bear the pain, the swan began to cry in excruciating agony, bleeding profusely. Moved by the unexpected sudden tragic sting of fate, Siddharth rushed to the wounded bird to its rescue.

Siddarth, without waiting a second, carefully removed the arrow from the bird, washed gently the wound, ordered for an unguent, applied it on the wound in a measure of the first aid treatment and tore a piece of cloth from his garment, tied it on the wound to stem the bleeding.  Siddharth’s cousin Devadutta came running after and claimed that the swan belonged to him because it was he who shot the arrow at the bird. Siddharth gently refused to hand over the bird to Devadutta stating that the swan belonged to himself as he saved the life of the bird.

For seeking a settlement over the dispute, both of them approached their Guru to seek justice. The Guru, after a keen deliberate consideration on the fateful incident, gave the verdict that the swan rightfully belonged to Siddharth because it was he who loved the bird from the bottom of his heart and the bird could get the safest lifelong shelter in the hands of Siddharth and those who did harm to helpless living beings could not claim any moral right on them.

Siddhartha, later grew up observing the various sufferings and misery undergone by various people  and other living beings, abdicated the kingdom and went on to become one of the supreme spiritual personalities in the world. The doctrines and the moral principles he preached to the people endowed him the stature of a heavenly divine soul and a new religion Buddhism was established in his name which continued to flourish well even today, followed by billions of followers in many countries across the world.

What made Siddhartha rush to the rescue of the wounded bird, even though the swan was not reared by him before the incident?  How come that Siddhartha had forgotten to wipe his own tears, while attending to the lamenting bird? Why was Siddhartha so possessive about the swan wailing helplessly? Why did the heartbeat of Siddhartha escalate up at the very sight of crying bird wriggling in agonizing pain?  Why did Siddhartha undergo the pangs of mental trauma, as if the arrow was darted off to pierce his own body?

Is Sympathy a Quality?

The single answer to all the above questions is sudden surge of compassion, called sympathy, born out of unblemished love. For sympathy to spring up from the heart of anybody, no previous acquaintance is compulsory, no pre-existing bond of friendship or relation is mandatory. You would lose no time in coming to the rescue of anyone, involuntarily, if there is an underlying feel of compassion in you. If the intensity of your affection is too strong, it might even be possible sometimes that you would find yourself having taken immediate course of practical action, without deliberate pre-planning for it.

Sympathy is unquestionably, a positive feeling to view the plight of others with a sense of compassion and pity. It certainly builds strong interpersonal relations and reinforces the noble trait of humanity in the world. The nature thrives well, inclusive of all the flora and fauna, if the inhabitants with their minds filled with kindheartedness dwell on the blue planet.

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Quotations On Sympathy:

Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.

-Norman Cousins

It's sad when someone you know becomes someone you knew.

-Henry Rollins

The purpose of human life is to serve, and to show compassion and the will to help others.

-Albert Schweitzer

A sympathetic friend can be quite as dear as a brother.

- Homer

There is no pain so great as the memory of joy in present grief.

- Aeschylus

Tears are the silent language of grief.

- Voltaire

Flowers grow out of dark moments.

- Corita Kent

We should feel sorrow, but not sink under its oppression.

- Confucius

Unable are the loved to die, for love is immortality.

- Emily Dickinson

Grief changes shape, but it never ends.

- Keanu Reeves

Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow. It empties today of its strength.

-Corrie Ten Boom

There is no greater sorrow than to recall happiness in times of misery.

-Dante Alighieri

When you lose a person you love so much, surviving the loss is difficult.

-Cristiano Ronaldo

When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions.

 -William Shakespeare

A sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier times.

-Alfred Lord Tennyson

Not without hope we suffer and we mourn.

-William Wordsworth

Happiness is beneficial for the body, but it is grief that develops the powers of the mind.

-Marcel Proust

To desire and expect nothing for oneself and to have profound sympathy for others is genuine holiness.

-Ivan Turgenev

Grief can't be shared. Everyone carries it alone. His own burden in his own way.

-Anne Morrow Lindbergh

What is lovely never dies, But passes into other loveliness.

-Thomas Bailey Aldrich

I'm not looking for sympathy at all.

-Arnold Schwarzenegger

When we are out of sympathy with the young, then I think our work in this world is over.

-George MacDonald

The true humanist maintains a just balance between sympathy and selection.

- Irving Babbitt

Sympathy is the first condition of criticism.

-Henri Frederic Amiel

Sorrow can be alleviated by good sleep, a bath and a glass of wine.

-Thomas Aquinas

Autumn wins you best by this its mute appeal to sympathy for its decay.

-Robert Browning

Loss and possession, death and life are one, There falls no shadow where there shines no sun.

-Hilaire Belloc

Children require guidance and sympathy far more than instruction.

 -Anne Sullivan

The dew of compassion is a tear.

-Lord Byron

From the end spring new beginnings.

-Pliny the Elder

Excessive sorrow laughs. Excessive joy weeps.

-William Blake

When you're successful, people have no sympathy. Nobody wants to catch the tears of a millionaire.

-Boy George

Deliberately seek opportunities for kindness, sympathy, and patience.

 -Evelyn Underhill

Life has never been easy. Nor is it meant to be. It is a matter of being joyous in the face of sorrow.

-Dirk Benedict

Bear and endure: This sorrow will one day prove to be for your good.

-Ovid

Any mind that is capable of real sorrow is capable of good.

-Harriet Beecher Stowe

Truly, it is in darkness that one finds the light, so when we are in sorrow, then this light is nearest of all to us.

- Meister Eckhart

Sorrow is so easy to express and yet so hard to tell.

-Joni Mitchell

Our trials, our sorrows, and our grieves develop us.

-Orison Swett Marden

Character is made of duty and love and sympathy, and, above all, of living and working for others.

-Robert Green Ingersoll

Sorrow is a fruit. God does not make it grow on limbs too weak to bear it. -Victor Hugo

If there was less sympathy in the world, there would be less trouble in the world.

-Oscar Wilde

Sympathy is two hearts tugging at one load.

-Charles Henry Parkhurst

The heart forgets its sorrow and ache.

- James Russell Lowell

Sympathy is the first condition of criticism.

-Henri Frederic Amiel

There is a joy in sorrow which none but a mourner can know.

- Jean Paul

I've never wanted sympathy votes in anything I do in my life.

-Amy Purdy

Recognition of belligerency as an expression of sympathy is all very well.

-Henry Cabot Lodge

Our sympathy is cold to the relation of distant misery.

-Edward Gibbon

The more sympathy you give, the less you need.

- Malcolm Forbes

The cure for sorrow is to learn something.

-Barbara Sher

“Dislike is much easier to handle than sympathy.”

― Amie Kaufman

“Sympathy is two hearts tugging at one load.”

― Charles Henry Parkhurst

“I required kindness and sympathy, but I did not believe myself utterly unworthy of it.”

― Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

“empathy is more powerful than sympathy”

― Angie Thomas

“You have to be honest, you can't love someone out of sympathy.”

― PewDiePie

Both tears and sweat are salty, but they render a different result. Tears will get you sympathy; sweat will get you change.

-Jesse Jackson

Those who weep recover more quickly than those who smile.

-Jean Giraudoux

Marriage must be a relation either of sympathy or of conquest.

-George Eliot

Sympathy is charming, but it does not make up for pain.

-Lillie Langtry

I have a strong sympathy for all women who have struggled and suffered.

-Edmonia Lewis

In any business, the more you learn, the more sympathetic you can be to other people's positions.

-Peter Asher

Sympathy with nature is part of a good person's religion.

-Francis Herbert Hedge

A crowd always thinks with its sympathy, never with its reason.

-William R. Alger

When you're successful, people have no sympathy. Nobody wants to catch the tears of a millionaire.

-Boy George

I think loss of loved ones is the hardest blow in life.

-Marlo Thomas

Interest does not tie nations together; it sometimes separates them. But sympathy and understanding does unite them.

-Woodrow Wilson

I was brought up to be sympathetic toward others.

-Joyce Carol Oates

I like the Rolling Stones for karaoke. 'Sympathy For The Devil' is a great one.

-Hugh Jackman

It's hard for me to think of others because I'm not particularly in sympathy with the music of this century.

-Alan Hovhaness

I'm completely indifferent to what genre I read provided that I feel sympathy with how a writer perceives being alive in the world.

-Thomas Ligott