38 Heartfelt Sympathy Quotes

In times of loss, finding the right words to offer comfort and support can be challenging. A heartfelt message can provide solace and show empathy when it is needed most. Whether you're penning a condolence card or sharing a moment of remembrance, a carefully chosen quote can transcend the limitations of language and convey profound compassion. In this collection, we've gathered 38 poignant sympathy quotes that speak to the heart, providing a gentle embrace of understanding during life's most difficult moments. This selection captures the essence of enduring love and the enduring presence of cherished memories, offering peace and hope when words alone may not suffice.

1. “one thing I don’t needis any more apologiesi got sorry greetin me at my front dooryou can keep yrsi don’t know what to do wit emthey don’t open doorsor bring the sun backthey don’t make me happyor get a mornin paperdidn’t nobody stop usin my tears to wash carscuz a sorry.” - Ntozake Shange

2. “It is terribly rude to tell people that their troubles are boring.” - Lemony Snicket

3. “Cry me a river, build a bridge, and get over it.” - Justin Timberlake

4. “There is in souls a sympathy with sounds:And as the mind is pitch'd the ear is pleasedWith melting airs, or martial, brisk or grave;Some chord in unison with what we hearIs touch'd within us, and the heart replies.” - William Cowper

5. “When we fully understand the brevity of life, its fleeting joys and unavoidable pains; when we accept the facts that all men and women are approaching an inevitable doom: the consciousness of it should make us more kindly and considerate of each other. This feeling should make men and women use their best efforts to help their fellow travelers on the road, to make the path brighter and easier as we journey on. It should bring a closer kinship, a better understanding, and a deeper sympathy for the wayfarers who must live a common life and die a common death.” - Clarence Darrow

6. “Peace has to be created, in order to be maintained. It is the product of Faith, Strength, Energy, Will, Sympathy, Justice, Imagination, and the triumph of principle. It will never be achieved by passivity and quietism.” - Dorothy Thompson

7. “Though sympathy alone can't alter facts, it can help to make them more bearable.” - Bram Stoker

8. “To what faults do you feel most indulgent? To the ones that arise from urgent material needs.” - Christopher Hitchens

9. “Innate in nearly every artistic nature is a wanton, treacherous penchant for accepting injustice when it creates beauty and showing sympathy for and paying homage to aristocratic privilege.” - Thomas Mann

10. “Sympathy is two hearts tugging at one load.” - Charles Henry Parkhurst

11. “A man's ethical behaviour should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.” - Albert Einstein

12. “Before I lost my father, I never understood the rituals surrounding funerals: the wake, the service itself, the reception afterward,the dinners prepared by well-meaning friends and delivered in plastic containers, even the popular habit of making poster boards filled with photos of the dear departed. But now I know why we do those things. It's busywork, all of it. I had so much to take care of, so many arrangements to make, so many people to inform, I didn't have a moment to be engulfed by the ocean of grief that was lapping at my heels. Instead, I waded through the shallows, performing task after task, grateful to have duties to propel me forward.” - Wendy Webb

13. “I nodded with genuine synthetic sympathy.” - Jeff Lindsay

14. “The mark of man is initiative, but the mark of woman is cooperation. Man talks about freedom; woman about sympathy, love, sacrifice. Man cooperates with nature; woman cooperates with God. Man was called to till the earth, to "rule over the earth"; woman to be the bearer of a life that comes from God.” - Fulton J. Sheen

15. “Who can tell what metals the gods use in forging the subtle bond which we call sympathy, which we might as well call love.” - Kate Chopin

16. “There are some situations which men understand by instinct, by which reason is powerless to explain; in such cases the greatest poet is he who gives utterance to the most natural and vehement outburst of sorrow. Those who hear the bitter cry are as much impressed as if they listened to an entire poem, and when th sufferer is sincere they are right in regarding his outburst as sublime.” - Alexandre Dumas

17. “We must laugh at man to avoid crying for him.” - Napoleon Bonaparte

18. “When good people consider you the bad guy, you develop a heart to help the bad ones. You actually understand them.” - Criss Jami

19. “George's hand lifted and fell away again. It seemed an insult to imply that anything so small as a touch could stop the raw feeling in Sir Stephen's suddenly dark and haunted eyes.” - Mette Ivie Harrison

20. “Science is better than sympathy, if only it is science.” - E.M. Forster

21. “Besides love and sympathy, animals exhibit other qualities connected with the social instincts which in us would be called moral.” - Charles Darwin

22. “I felt ashamed for having judged him so harshly without knowing the real boy. His one offense against me―goaded by Charlie’s bullying character―was easy to forgive.” - Richelle Goodrich

23. “I couldn’t think of anyone I’d ever felt sorry for. There were plenty of kids I was envious of. There were others I achingly admired, but that might simply be another form of jealousy. Then there were those I feared, dreaded. And the worst of them, the man who shamed me. I could see my father’s angry features looming over my mother. I could clearly picture her beside him in his truck, cowering against the door while he belittled and assaulted her. I guess I did know someone I felt sorry for.” - Richelle E. Goodrich

24. “She left me, offended at my want of sympathy, and thinking, no doubt, that I envied her. I did not - at least, I firmly believed I did not.” - Anne Brontë

25. “Darkness as well as light. Or do I mean darkness, another kind of light? Lucifer would say so, and I have a weakness for fallen angels.” - Jeanette Winterson

26. “Woman's fatal weakness is to desire sympathy and comprehension.--"Wanda” - Ouida

27. “Bottled, was he?" Said Colonel Bantry, with an Englishman's sympathy for alcoholic excess. "Oh, well, can't judge a fellow by what he does when he's drunk? When I was at Cambridge, I remember I put a certain utensil - well - well, nevermind.” - Agatha Christie

28. “Could I tell them I was sorry their loved one was dead, when he’d tried to kill me? There was no rule of etiquette for this; even my grandmother would have been stymied.” - Charlaine Harris

29. “There is something very morbid about modern sympathy with pain.” - Oscar Wilde

30. “Sympathy is why when a man is getting mugged, you let him keep his shirt after you take his life. Funerals are respectable affairs, after all.” - Bauvard

31. “September did not want to feel for the Marquess. That’s how villains get you, she knew. You feel badly for them, and next thing you know, you’re tied to train tracks. But her wild, untried heart opened up another bloom inside her, a dark branch heavy with fruit.” - Catherynne M. Valente

32. “If a person's mind is controlled by forces of revenge and jealousy, it cannot express love & sympathy. And even if they show love and sympathy to others it will yield no good result. The thought will not be reflected in love but in hate.” - Virchand Raghavji Gandhi

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

34. “With a little more patience and a little less temper, a gentler and wiser method might be found in almost every case; and the knot that we cut by some fine heady quarrel-scene in private life, or, in public affairs, by some denunciatory act against what we are pleased to call our neighbour's vices might yet have been unwoven by the hand of sympathy.” - Robert Louis Stevenson

35. “We never think lightly of those who walk with us on our uphill days.” - Richelle E. Goodrich

36. “It was all conveyed by the nicest, almost indetectably refined blend of sympathy and bitchiness...” - John Wyndham

37. “The glory of fame isn't in having so many people know you, but in having so many people know you care. Otherwise, it's like being drawn to a fire to find no warmth.” - Richelle E. Goodrich

38. “Why do humans always look at these things from the wrong perspective? Predators deserve our sympathy, too.” - Beth Fantaskey