Empathy quotes

Life Without and Life Within, Part I ‘Reviews,’ essay ‘Menzel's View of Gœthe,’ Project Gutenberg #39037. ‘For the soul seeks not adorers, but peers’ appears in Fuller's discussion of the youth of genius, mockers and worshippers, immediately contrasting blind worship with ‘intelligent sympathy.’ It remains nineteenth-century literary criticism and intellectual reflection rather than a universal social or relationship rule.

Little Men; the observation describes the mutual education taking place in the Plumfield household and school rather than a one-way transfer of knowledge.

Howards End, Chapter XXII, Project Gutenberg #2946. The narrator summarizes Margaret’s hope of reconciling “the prose and the passion” in Henry with “Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon.” The sentence belongs to the novel’s thematic and character context rather than serving as a complete formula for every relationship.

Adam Bede; spoken in dialect within the novel, so the source note keeps the fictional conversational setting rather than turning it into an editionless author maxim.

Romans 12:15 in the King James Version.

My Confession, Leo Wiener translation; Tolstoy describes how closer attention to living and departed people increased his affection for them and altered his ability to live.

Emma, Volume I, Chapter IX, scan-backed 1816 John Murray first edition on Wikisource. Emma tells her father that one half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other while explaining why his grandchildren enjoy rough play that he himself cannot comprehend; this is Emma Woodhouse’s fictional dialogue, not Austen speaking autobiographically.

Daniel Deronda; narrator-level phrase in a passage about unnoticed social influence and responsiveness to others.

Character Building, “Growth,” Project Gutenberg #60484. The line sits inside a longer appeal to remember parents and others invested in the student’s success.

The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Part I discussion of sympathy with joy and affliction; represented by the 1777 Dublin edition in Project Gutenberg #67363.

Eight Cousins; Or, The Aunt-Hill, Chapter 17, Project Gutenberg #38567. Narrator commentary follows Mac's complaint that parents and children have never learned to talk openly.

Anne of Avonlea, Project Gutenberg #47. Anne speaks to Diana during their conversation about Diana’s engagement; the line is fictional dialogue connecting imagination with sympathetic understanding.

Walden, “The Bean-Field,” Project Gutenberg #205. Thoreau follows the question by imagining living through other ages and worlds in an hour; the passage is about the variety of human experience and the limits of judging what another life can contain.

2 Corinthians 1:4 in the King James Version; the clause is excerpted before the verse repeats the source of comfort.

“Griefs,” Poems: Third Series (1896), Project Gutenberg #12242. The poem explores comparison and recognition of suffering rather than offering a clinical scale for grief.

The Essays of George Eliot, essay VII, ‘Worldliness and Other-Worldliness: The Poet Young,’ around printed page 247, Project Gutenberg #28289. The frozen quote is a clause extracted from Eliot's longer enumeration of virtues grounded in human sympathy—neighbor's rights, participation in others' joys and sorrows, and accepting privation when it benefits others—inside her argument that such morality need not depend directly on belief in a future state. It remains Victorian literary/theological criticism rather than a complete empirical theory of altruism.

Lectures on Art, Lecture III, Project Gutenberg #19164. Ruskin is discussing how practice changes the viewer’s ability to recognize workmanship in art.

Character Building, “The Highest Education,” Project Gutenberg #60484. Washington defines education broadly enough to include considerate treatment of people facing poverty, disability or other misfortune; this sentence appears in that address’s discussion of gentleness and sympathy.

Great Expectations (1861), global Chapter LIX / Volume III Chapter XX in the Chapman & Hall three-volume first book edition. Estella tells Pip that suffering has taught her to understand what his heart used to be and hopes that being “bent and broken” has left her in a better shape. Verified against the scan-backed Wikisource Volume III Chapter XX transcription and cross-checked with Project Gutenberg #1400. This remains a fictional character’s moral self-assessment, not empirical evidence that suffering reliably improves people.

A Defence of Poetry, written in 1821 and first published posthumously in 1840. The represented wording is verified in Project Gutenberg #5428 and the standalone Wikisource transcription; the immediately preceding sentences define moral imagination through identification with other people rather than through fantasy alone.

De Amicitia (Laelius de Amicitia), chapter 6 / classical section 20, Andrew P. Peabody translation, Project Gutenberg #7491. Laelius defines friendship as entire fellow feeling in human and divine things joined with mutual goodwill and affection. Cicero remains the work author while Gaius Laelius is the local dialogue speaker; this is ancient ethical-philosophical argument rather than a modern empirical definition of friendship.

The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Part I, Section I, Chapter I “Of Sympathy”; represented by Project Gutenberg’s 1777 Dublin edition.