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Sympathize   /sˈɪmpəθˌaɪz/   Listen
Sympathize

verb
(past & past part. sympathized; pres. part. sympathizing)
1.
Share the feelings of; understand the sentiments of.  Synonym: sympathise.
2.
Be understanding of.  Synonyms: empathise, empathize, sympathise, understand.
3.
To feel or express sympathy or compassion.  Synonyms: commiserate, sympathise.



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"Sympathize" Quotes from Famous Books



... the general progress of a war which has been marked with cruelty and rapine; while we survey the ruins of this once flourishing city and its vicinity; while we sympathize in the calamities which have reduced so many of our virtuous fellow-citizens to want and distress, and are anxiously solicitous for means to repair the wastes and misfortunes which we lament," we cannot ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis

... hot shot are said to have struck this church and set it on fire more than fifty times: quite good shooting but bad manners. No wonder, then, that this Church of the Virgin and St. Charles has lost its pristine beauty; yet it has an attraction of its own to those who sympathize with its misfortunes, and there are still some quaint old corners of the Hermitage attached to the edifice, built by Dienzenhofer, for ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker

... arrived with the fatal summons. About two o'clock the king proceeded through the long gallery, lined on each side with soldiers, who, far from insulting the fallen monarch, appeared by their sorrowful looks to sympathize with his fate. At the end an aperture had been made in the wall, through which he stepped at once upon the scaffold. It was hung with black; at the farther end were seen the two executioners, the block, and ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc

... that lead pipe is being used and the only successful way of joining is with the wiped joint. Some plumbers' helpers of today seem to think that joint wiping is of no account. To a certain extent, I can sympathize with them. Most of these boys are learning a trade in large cities and working for concerns that do nothing but a large contracting business. This large work is carried on differently from the small work. Wrought-iron or steel pipes are used to a great extent in this work and ...
— Elements of Plumbing • Samuel Dibble

... soothed. She could not sympathize with the tropical nature, that smiled like sunshine at one moment, and the next burst into the fury of a tornado. She pushed off the beseeching hand, turned from the offered endearments, and, with reddened, tear-stained ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various

... it after a while, and then he became proud of it. If a friend ventured to suggest a criticism, or to sympathize, he would calmly respond, "'The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her, so that he shall have no need of spoil. Give her of the fruit of her hands, and let her own works ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... serene and sparkling; the wind fresh and fair; and the motion of the steamer smooth and swift. Our travelers, despite the care at the bottom of their hearts, enjoyed it immensely. Who, with a remnant of hope remaining to them, can fail to sympathize with the beauty, glory, and rapture of Nature ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

... to sustain or to revive his obsolete reputation. Capua or other great towns knew him only as a great proprietor. And let us ask this one searching question—Was the poor spirit-broken insolvent, a character now so extensively prevailing in Italian society, likely to sympathize more heartily with the lordly oligarch fighting only for the exclusive privileges of his own narrow order, or with the great reformer who amongst a thousand plans for reinfusing vitality into Roman polity was well understood to be digesting ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... had induced me to visit the capital of the East at such a period of mortality; and I will therefore only add, that circumstances of a peculiarly painful nature obliged me to locate myself in Galata, where there were none to sympathize in my feelings, or any one with whom I could even exchange more than a word of conversation. I saw none but the widowed owner of the house in which I had a chamber, her daughter Aleuka, and ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various

... was one of the reasons why Cuthbert welcomed the coming of Owen, for somehow he fancied that the young Canadian might be built along his own lines, and able to sympathize with him as the good-hearted but crude Eli never could, since it was not in his nature to go beyond the ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne

... admitted to a common fund of ideas, to common objects of interest with men; and this must ever be the essential condition at once of true womanly culture and of true social well-being. We have no faith in feminine conversazioni, where ladies are eloquent on Apollo and Mars; though we sympathize with the yearning activity of faculties which, deprived of their proper material, waste themselves in weaving fabrics out of cobwebs. Let the whole field of reality be laid open to woman as well as to man, and then that which is peculiar ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot

... said John. "Do you suppose I want to leave all the past associations of my life, and strip my home bare of all pleasant memorials, because I bring a little wife here? Why, the very idea of a wife is somebody to sympathize in your tastes; and Lillie will love and appreciate all these dear old things as you and I do. She has such a sympathetic heart! If you want to make me happy, Gracie, stay here, and let us live, as near as may ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... place, being of French descent, was disposed at first to sympathize with the Acadians and treat them with a lenity that to the members of his council seemed neither fitting nor prudent. He wrote to Shirley: "The French inhabitants are certainly in a very perilous situation, those who pretend ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman

... "I can sympathize with that poor man," Mikah said severely. "You are a brute, Jason, to punish him for his natural feelings. Cease your sadistic attack and ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey

... blasts from March needs April borrow, His own oft proves enow to breed us sorrow, Yet if he weyr with us to sympathize, His trickling tears will ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 482, March 26, 1831 • Various

... poor little girl (pauvre petite); she has scarcely any relations, her own efforts are all she has to look to, her acquirements must be her sole fortune; her present position has once been mine, or nearly so; it is then but natural I should sympathize with her; and sometimes when I see the difficulty she has in managing pupils, I reel quite chagrined. I doubt not she does her best, her intentions are excellent; but, monsieur, she wants tact and firmness. I have talked to her on the subject, but I am not fluent, ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell

... ever fail to sympathize in the sufferings of others, and use your utmost endeavors to ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes

... have mocked him, in a friendly, half-hearted fashion. I am a medical man, and my own profession is one that does not sympathize ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various

... who has the slightest regard for historical monuments, who values medival architecture, or cares in the least degree for the beautiful and the picturesque, must heartily sympathize with M. Victor Hugo in his protest against the proposed scheme for uniting the wonderful island of Mont St. Michel with the mainland by means of a causeway, and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 430, March 29, 1884 • Various

... youth has flown, finds he has a wife who is not capable of being companion or friend to him. Many a man holds himself steadfast to duty under these circumstances through a long life, but if the woman whom his maturity would have chosen—the sweet, companionable woman, with a mind that can sympathize with and appreciate his own—chances to dawn upon him, too late, there is apt to be a struggle ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold

... that we Americans speak with a decided dialect of our own, and attach the same occult meaning to it. Yet, upon my word, I think that Lord Beverdale—or shall I say Lord Algernon?—would not only understand that American word 'guess' as you mean it, but would perfectly sympathize with you." ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte

... don't you know—she's different. She's a good deal like other women I know. When she's placed somebody else in a false position, she thinks that person ought to be very sorry for her, and sympathize with her, for having been deceived and misled. She thinks you ought to say how sorry ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King

... generally raised to a just appreciation of that study which, more than all others, forms the mind to habits of correct thinking; that, in reflecting upon the state of the science at the present time, and upon the means of its improvement, the author cannot but sympathize, in some degree, with the sadness of the learned Sanctius; who tells us, that he had "always lamented, and often with tears, that while other branches of learning were excellently taught, grammar, which is the foundation of all others, lay so much neglected, and that for this neglect ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... enough to sympathize with the delight that my kind feel in beauty they see and harmony they hear. This bond between humanity and me is worth keeping, even if the idea on which I base it ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller

... unnatural as Lear's relation to his daughters, or even more so, and therefore it is still more difficult for the spectator to transport himself into the mental condition of Gloucester and his sons and sympathize with them, than it is to do so into that of ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy

... Bellegarde; "this will go far, it will be very entertaining. Excuse my speaking of it in that cold-blooded fashion, but the matter must, of necessity, be for me something of a spectacle. It's positively exciting. But apart from that I sympathize with you, and I shall be actor, so far as I can, as well as spectator. You are a capital fellow; I believe in you and I back you. The simple fact that you appreciate my sister will serve as the proof I was asking for. All men ...
— The American • Henry James

... "I can sympathize with you," said Daniels; "for the plague of my life is a preacher who looks like me. Only last week I was stopped on the street by a man who wanted me to go to his house and perform ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard

... dear friend, you should have had this letter and these messages by the last steamer; but when it sailed, my son, a perfect little boy of five years and three months, had ended his earthly life. You can never sympathize with me; you can never know how much of me such a young child can take away. A few weeks ago I accounted myself a very rich man, and now the poorest of all. What would it avail to tell you anecdotes of a sweet and wonderful boy, such ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... protection of their King, and parted. They, therefore, that were of the Pilgrims' company went on, and Mr. Great-heart went before them. Now the women and children being weakly, they were forced to go as they could bear; by this means Mr. Ready-to-halt and Mr. Feeble-mind had more to sympathize with their condition. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... it does at that," he agreed. "I can sympathize with the soldier who has such an absolute disgust for a civilian. You know there is no love ...
— The Boy Allies in Great Peril • Clair W. Hayes

... unfortunate in his domestic relations. Xanthippe, his wife, seems to have been of a practical turn of mind, and unable to sympathize with the abstracted ways of ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers

... human being, are marked instances. Dryden does not himself acknowledge the bold license which he has used in regenerating; he does himself less than justice. The worth of his work is not the giving to modern England her ancient poet, without the trouble of acquiring his language, or of learning to sympathize with his manner. It would almost seem as if that were an enterprise which there is no accomplishing. Rightly to speak, it was not Dryden's. He really undertook, from a great old poem lying before him, to write a great modern poem, which he has done; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various

... a patriot not to sympathize in the struggle for colonial rights which now agitated the whole country, and we find him gradually carried more and more into the ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving

... for help. In the first place Kirby undoubtedly had the law with him, and besides was among friends—those who would naturally believe him, and were loyal to the institution of slavery. The very fact that this was a Memphis boat we were on precluded any possibility that the crew would sympathize with a nigger-stealer. Nor could I anticipate any assistance from without. Steamboats were few and far between on these northern waters, and at this time, if the report of war was true, everything afloat would be headed up stream, ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish

... become a vassal of Russia's enemies. In her attitude towards Serbia, when Serbia is fighting for her very existence, Bulgaria puts herself in the class with Turkey. We do not believe that the Bulgarian people sympathize with the action of their ruler therefore, the Allies are disposed to give them time for reflection. If they persist in their present treacherous course they must answer to Russia." The next day the following ultimatum from Russia was ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish

... not from saints and heroes. Here lies the real value of real history. It makes us familiar with the thoughts of men who differ from us in manners and language, in thought and religion, and yet with whom we are able to sympathize, and from whom we are able to learn. It widens our minds and our hearts, and gives us that true knowledge of the world and of human nature in all its phases which but few can gain in the short span of their own life, and ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller

... it is originally built more as a plaything than as a monument; as the delight of an individual, not the possession of a race; and that the very lightness and carelessness of feeling with which such a domicile is entered and inhabited by its first builder would demand, to sympathize and keep in unison with them, not the kind of building adapted to excite the veneration of ages, but that which can most gayly minister to the amusement of hours. For all men desire to have memorials of their actions, but none of their recreations; inasmuch ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin

... "I sympathize with you most fully. I too have had my share of lies told on me, by Dana and his 'Sun,' and shall be disappointed if the libels are not continued, especially if I do right. Really you have a white elephant on your hands. You can neither take the back pay, nor leave ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman

... days here would show you the disgusting composition of the Party which within the Union resists the national action. Take from it the wild Irish element, imported in the last twenty-five year's into this country, and led by Romish Priests, who sympathize, of course, with despotism, and you would bereave it of all its numerical strength. A man intelligent and virtuous is not to be found on that side. Ah! how gladly I would enlist you, with your thunderbolt, on our part! How gladly enlist the wise, ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson

... Constitution new restrictions as to the acquisition of territory, proves you do not consider you need more territory. I heard it said, the other day, by a gentleman from Virginia, that the South wanted the provision for a finality, to end forever this dispute about slavery. With all my heart I sympathize with him in his desire to end this discussion forever. You think you have suffered from these discussions at the South; so have we at the North. It has separated families and neighborhoods; it has broken up and scattered Christian churches; it has severed every ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden

... "I sympathize with Eve," said Wendy, munching blissfully. "It must have been a very great temptation, especially with 'knowledge' thrown in. Just think of being able to eat an apple that would teach you all your ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... reach, through one of those doors, every man in the United States who does not sympathize with us in a supreme allegiance to our country. You would be amused to see some of the letters that come to me, asking almost peremptorily what methods should be adopted by which men and women can be Americanized, as if there were some one particular prescription that ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various

... of his daily expenditure, which he balanced to a halfpenny every evening, and his handwriting, always beautiful and legible, was more so at sixty- six than at twenty-six; nor of his patience and cheerfulness during years of anxiety when he had few to sympathize with him; nor of the strange mixture of simplicity and shrewdness that caused one who knew him well to say: "Il sait tout; il ne sait rien; ...
— Samuel Butler: A Sketch • Henry Festing Jones

... myself when I'm dinner-dressed," said the sister, "so I sympathize with him and I'll go with ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner

... but only for a moment. I had not even time to fall into a doze before one of the others was back at it. This amused the drinking natives. I suppose the poor beasts very passionately wanted to scratch their backs. I could sympathize with them; none of them could have had as many fleas as I had, for their superficial area was not as great; but perhaps they had as many per ...
— Gold • Stewart White

... came so near being a physical one, Stuyvesant emerged very victorious. The Company had ever been disposed to sympathize with him in his measures. The delegate Le Bleuw, who had carried charges against him to Holland, was almost rudely repulsed, and was forbidden to return to New Netherland. The Directors of the Company wrote ...
— Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam • John S. C. Abbott

... most willingly have planted her in the congenial soil of the Shoshone House, which would have provided a wider field for her restlessness and self-occupation, and many more people to listen to her narratives and sympathize with her complaints. But it was no use. She was resolved to abide by the fortunes of ...
— Clover • Susan Coolidge

... his most precious treasure. Ye Gentlemen of England, who live at home at ease, know full well the anxiety and exertion, the days of management, and the nights of meditation which the rape of a lock requires, and you can consequently sympathize with the agitated feelings of the handsome and the ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli

... everlasting words of Christ would be interpreted in their broadest sense—and where, in fine, by the habitual exercise and expansion of the most generous sentiments, men were prepared for the magnificent apostolic mission of making the rich and happy sympathize with the sufferings of their brethren, by unveiling the frightful miseries of humanity—a sublime and sacred morality, which none are able to withstand, when it is preached with eyes full of tears, and hearts overflowing ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... how to sympathize with every one. The people felt this, without knowing why, and recognized it in every deed or word or touch, so that those who have once felt the grasp of his great warm hand seem to have been drawn into ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple

... on page 9 of this sketch. Again at Woolwich, what made him unhappy was not so much the evils which he saw but his impotence to deal with them. So now again at Oxford he feels "impotent," impotent this time to feel and sympathize as he would have wished with suffering humanity. But within him was the light, "the light which is, of course, not physical," which betrayed itself through his wonderful smile—the same now as in babyhood; and from his mother, and perhaps also from the young country ...
— A Student in Arms - Second Series • Donald Hankey

... help me," he returned, in the same muffled voice; but she would not be repulsed. She swept back the dark hair from his forehead and kissed him. Did she not share his sufferings? Could any one sympathize with him as she could? "Oh, if mother were only here," she sighed, feeling her inability to comfort him. "Mother is so sorry for you, she cried about it the ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... an odd habit to some men, but I sympathize with it. I have it myself, in fact. And whenever I'm out in the wilds and carry a gun I like to have it under my head when I sleep. That's even queerer than ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand

... Indeed I sympathize with the boy who exchanges the music of birds, melody of streams, lowing of herds, driving of teams, diamond dew on bending blade, morning sun and evening shade, with all other sweet associations of country life for a lodging room in a city, where church doors ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain

... praises and in lamentation over the wrongs of the past. The majority were sympathetic listeners, but all were glad that the girl could do and was willing to do something more than complain. To their credit it should be said that they were ready to do more than sympathize, for even the most straitened found that they could spare something for Mara's cake, and Aun' Sheba's basket began to be emptied more than once every day. Orders were given also, and the young girl had all she could do to keep up with ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe

... whose infringement we hear so much is to be made safer by the election of Mr. Bell, Mr. Breckinridge, or Mr. Douglas,—there being quite as little chance that any of them would abolish human nature as that Mr. Lincoln would abolish slavery. The same generous instinct that leads some among us to sympathize with the sorrows of the bereaved master will always, we fear, influence others to take ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell

... was not uncomfortable during that splendid automobile ride over mountain and plain into the paradise of the glowing West. Never before in her life had Myrtle enjoyed an outing, except for an hour or two in a city park; never before had she known a friend to care for her and sympathize honestly with her griefs. Therefore this experience was so exquisitely delightful that her responsive heart nearly burst with gratitude. Pretty thoughts came to her that she had never had before; her luxurious surroundings ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne

... girl's fancy. She is in truth such a Chloe of innocence as might spring up in the rank soil of a petty Italian court infected with post-Tridentine morality. Were she indeed careless of Aminta's devotion we could easily sympathize with her when she brushes aside Dafne's importunity ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg

... am depressed in spirit, and can sympathize but little in your exultation. All the crimes of Nero and Caligula are less afflicting to humanity, and consequently we may suppose will bring down on the offenders a less severe retribution, than ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor

... "And there I sympathize with thee most heartily, Master Morgan. When I was of thine age and went a-sweethearting, my own fancy lighted upon a dainty damosel yclept Dorothy, and, like thee, I found the name most unreasonable in the matter of rhyme and rhythm. Cut it down to 'Dolly,' and that most unkind ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan

... that you are not quite yourself. I sympathize with you, for I am somebody else. It is the two W's, Work and Weather, that are playing the mischief with us.... You must not open a book; you must not even look at an inkstand. These are both contraband articles, upon which we have to pay heavy duties. We cannot smuggle them in. Nature's ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields

... his impulses less generous, his brain less virile, his sympathies less instinctive and true. The strong impregnable man, the man whom no vice tempts, no weakness assails, who is loyal without effort,—such a man lacks breadth and magnetism and the power to read the human heart and sympathize with both its noble impulses and its terrible weaknesses. Such men—I never have known it to fail—are full of petty vanities and egoisms and contemptible weaknesses, the like of which Estenega ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... every one of them there had been a tragedy such as often comes to the immigrants who reach the United States equipped for success only with strong muscles—a tragedy of wasted hope and broken courage and failing vigor if not of death. Mrs. Paterno was the only one of them who could sympathize with Moya's widowhood; her husband had seen the Black Hand death sign a few months before, had disregarded it and had been stabbed in the back one night as he ...
— Ethel Morton at Rose House • Mabell S. C. Smith

... have greatly rejoiced, and so would all his friends. I had accumulated a small property, and was prospering, notwithstanding the efforts of many to embarrass me. A few began to see that I was not so bad as I had been represented to be, and they began to sympathize with me. This aroused my father's anger afresh. We had been married by a magistrate of another town, and the clouds above our outside or temporary affairs seemed breaking away, when an event occurred ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams

... maxim I know in life, is to drink your coffee when you can, and when you cannot, to be easy without it; while you continue to be splenetic, count upon it I will always preach. Thus much I sympathize with you, that I am not cheerful enough to write, for, I believe, coffee once a week is necessary, and you know very well that coffee makes us severe, and grave, ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... directly; and only two or three times indirectly. She had never visited the city since her flight therefrom, and all her pleasant and strongly influencing associations there were, in consequence, at an end. Once her very dear friend Mrs. Talbot came up to sympathize with and strengthen her in the fiery trial through which she was passing. She found Irene's truer friend, Rosa Carman, with her; and Rose did not leave them alone for a moment at a time. All sentiments that she regarded as hurtful to Irene ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur

... the man who had been picked off the wreck. He had tracked us down somehow, and had set himself to live upon our fears. You will understand now how it was that I strove to keep the peace with him, and you will in some measure sympathize with me in the fears which fill me, now that he has gone from me to his other victim ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... away, the brother and sister could freely sympathize, and she sought him in this fresh sorrow, to communicate such solace as she could, and to learn particulars of Mary's untimely death, and assist ...
— Our Nig • Harriet E. Wilson

... into his face, for it seemed most unfitting that the wounded man should sympathize with him, but finding nothing apposite to say he kept silent, and Okanagan shook his ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss

... inn door into the courtyard, the crowd in no wise baffled swarming at our heels, sometimes not even stopping at the entrance to the inner court, sacred (more or less) to the so-called mandarin rooms, the best rooms of the place. I could not but sympathize with the innkeeper, the order of his establishment thus upset, but he took it in good part; perhaps the turmoil had its value in making known to the whole world that the wandering foreigner had bestowed her patronage upon his house. I am sure he had some reward in the many cups of tea ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall

... figure of a Cree squaw, blanketed and many-wrinkled and unmistakably dirty, blinking at the devil-wagons and the ceaseless hurry of the white man. And being somewhat Indianized, as my husband once assured me I was, I could sympathize with that stolid ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer

... feel weary of mirth in which I could not sympathize. Mrs. Linwood came to me, and saying I looked pale and wan, insisted upon my retiring. To this I gladly assented. The little misunderstanding between Edith and myself weighed heavily on my spirits, and ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz

... survey of Connecticut, he was not specially devoted to any one branch of physics, although his tastes inclined him most toward geology. While he could sympathize perfectly, he said, with those who threw their whole force into a single study, he felt himself attracted equally by the entire circle of Nature, and thought omniscience a nobler object of ambition than any one ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various

... "Seems odd that you should turn up this morning. I can sympathize with you. Have ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... very well; but now you would be miserable. I can imagine no more dissatisfied human being than an educated, cultured, and refined colored man in the United States. I have given more study to the race question in the United States than you may suppose, and I sympathize with the Negroes there; but what's the use? I can't right their wrongs, and neither can you; they must do that themselves. They are unfortunate in having wrongs to right, and you would be foolish to take their wrongs unnecessarily on your shoulders. Perhaps some day, through ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson

... as did Pegeen Mike, the difference between a "gallous story and a dirty deed." But sometimes, if we are a people living a primitive life, we will no more awaken to the reality of the wrong of roguery than we would as children have been able to sympathize with the farmer whose pumpkin patch we raided on the eve of Hallowe'en. A sneaking sympathy with roguery, however, is a very different thing from a delight in extravagance. That, too, is a universal passion, but not so native to the Teuton as to Celt or Finn or Oriental. Its absence is what ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt

... which makes people take instinctively the right side. His reasons might be wrong, but he was in the right. There are people in history, and Morris is one of them, about whom we feel that if they were alive they would sympathize with whatever were the best and most pressing aspirations of the age. Morris would, of course, be as firm to-day as ever against plutocracy, but one feels sure that he would take his stand with those who are trying to win for themselves ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell

... Galatea,' was in the song they sung at my first wedding," said Alfred; "I once fell in love with a beautiful statue, which awoke to life in my arms; but the kindred soul, which is a gift from heaven, the angel who can feel and sympathize with and elevate us, I have not found and won till now. You came, Sophy, not in the glory of outward beauty, though you are even fairer than is necessary. The chief thing still remains. You came to teach the sculptor that his work is but dust and clay only, an outward form made ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... Intensely Greek, and patriotic, and not a little versed in politics, she sees nothing cheering in the situation of the Empire. The vigils of night in her oratory are leaving their traces on her face. Her eyes are worn with weeping. I find it impossible not to sympathize with so much beauty tempered by so many virtues. When the worst has befallen, perhaps my Lord will know how to ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace

... general dislike which it inspired, deserves the warmest praise. But Hamilton's unpopularity was fundamentally due to deeper causes. He and his fellow-Federalists did not understand their fellow-countrymen and sympathize with their purposes, and naturally they were repaid with misunderstanding and suspicion. He ceased, after Washington's retirement, to be a national leader, and became the leader of a faction; and before his death his party ceased to be the national party, and came to represent ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly

... action, a power somewhat similar to what in physical philosophy is called induction. On the other hand, if the father, instead of feeding the bird, goes eagerly for a gun, in order that he may shoot it, the boy will sympathize in that desire, and growing up under such an influence, there will be gradually formed within him, through the mysterious tendency of the youthful heart to vibrate in unison with hearts that are near, a disposition to kill and destroy all helpless beings ...
— Stuyvesant - A Franconia Story • Jacob Abbott

... your kind feelings," laughed John. "Now I want you to sympathize with me. I had gone to half a dozen different places doing my best to select certain good things for our luncheon. I had a choice assortment too, let me tell you. Why Pop's eyes would have popped out if he ...
— Go Ahead Boys and the Racing Motorboat • Ross Kay

... "do not be ungenerous towards him. It was the impulse of a generous heart that your majesty should understand and sympathize with. When he heard my account he cried,—'What! the queen refuse herself such a thing, and perhaps see it one day worn by one of her subjects!' And when I told him that it was bought for the Queen of Portugal, he was more indignant than ever. He cried, 'It is no longer a simple question ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere

... the Music in the Air at your Father's Death—Oh, how Frederic Tennyson would open all his Eyes at this! For he lives in a World of Spirits—Swedenborg's World, which you would not approve; which I cannot sympathize with: but yet I admire the Titanic old Soul so resolutely blind to ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald

... for Arctic explorers who go north and keep on going until they run out of things to eat. I admire their heroism and sympathize with their sufferings, but I deplore their bad judgment. There are grapes growing on trellises in the little courtyard at the back, but they are too green for human consumption. I speak authoritatively on this ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb

... round it, real sharp bobs, too, and we had to gin in. Of course it wuzn't a big spot, but we despised the idee of havin' it took from us just as much as though it wuz the hull contient of Asia, and we can't git over it, Josiah nor me can't. And I know jest how you feel, and I sympathize with you." ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley

... outrageously wicked, nothing grovelling or base, nothing sordid or mean. On the other hand, it discloses a man of many noble and generous impulses; a man with a great heart in his bosom which could warmly sympathize with the wrongs of his fellow-creatures; a man in whom was no selfishness or greed; a man of decided principles and stainless morals; who was incapable of dishonesty or cruelty; who had a high sense of human responsibility; who feared ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent

... pale [so it ran on], but he does not allow anybody to sympathize with him. I think you ought to know something that I have n't told before for fear of hurting your feelings; but if I were in your place I'd like to hear everything, and then you'll know how to act when you come home. Just after you left, Stephen ploughed up all ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... wrong, and judge the general from the particular. Perhaps we are deficient in power to express grief. Perhaps we don't feel it. I don't know. I have known men at sea who raved about their parents' perfections and I was unable to sympathize and regale them with anecdotes about my 'old lady.' I couldn't. I don't remember ever talking to anybody about my mother. That isn't to say for a single instant, however, that I didn't esteem her. We simply were not designed ...
— Aliens • William McFee

... proud feeling of melancholy and pity that made him in spite of all sympathize with the opera? It interested him more than he would admit. Although he went on telling Sylvain Kohn, as they left the theater, that it was "very fine, very fine, but lacking in Schwung (impulse), and did not contain enough music ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland

... a fine example of revolt against the airy and shallow optimism of current religious philosophy in a publication of that valiant anarchistic writer Morrison I. Swift. Mr. Swift's anarchism goes a little farther than mine does, but I confess that I sympathize a good deal, and some of you, I know, will sympathize heartily with his dissatisfaction with the idealistic optimisms now in vogue. He begins his pamphlet on 'Human Submission' with a series of city reporter's items from newspapers (suicides, deaths from starvation and the like) as ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James

... years. Day after day so many hundreds wore on; they brought no outward changes with them, but some few slowly operated on my mind as I glided on towards death. I began to study more; to sympathize more in the thoughts of others as expressed in books; to read history, and to lose my individuallity among the crowd that had existed before me. Thus perhaps as the sensation of immediate suffering wore off, I ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

... the poet's almost inexpressible grief, and because we are convinced, we sympathize. And we feel too that the poet's sorrow is so overwhelming and has so filled his soul that it has entirely changed his views of life and of nature, or has at least contributed materially to such a change,—that it has assumed larger proportions and may rightly ...
— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun

... you, my father: I love you even now, and sympathize with you deeply; and I feel that I shall love you more and more, and as I shall see you oftener and know you better," said ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

... without a corresponding break in the flow of thought or feeling, the reader will be confused, because the outward form has fallen into contradiction with its inner soul, and he discerns the opposition, and knows not with which to sympathize. Such contrarieties argue want of power or want of freedom in the poet, who should never suffer the clanking of his rhythmical chains to be heard. Such causeless breaks proceed from want of truth to the subject, and prove a lack of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various

... throw myself at length upon the sand, and, basking in the sunshine, let my mind disport itself at will. The walls of this my hermitage have no tongue to tell my follies, though I sometimes fancy that they have ears to hear them, and a soul to sympathize. There is a magic in this spot. Dreams haunt its precincts, and flit around me in broad sunlight, nor require that sleep shall blindfold me to real objects, ere these be visible. Here can I frame a ...
— Footprints on The Sea-Shore (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... made to enjoy it. I belong to the free, and I don't feel free here. The silken chains and the feather-bed life won't suit me; of that I am quite sure. Thank goodness, however, there's Molly; she is in a state of rebellion, too. I must not sympathize with her; but I am ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade

... insulting to Angelo. Finally one day our client made up his mind not to stand it any longer, secured a revolver, sought out Tomasso in his barber shop and put a bullet through his head. Now however much you may sympathize with Angelo as a man and a husband there isn't the slightest doubt that he killed Tomasso with every kind ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train

... poems be beautiful; let them be tender and affecting, and bear away the soul of the auditor whithersoever they please. As the human countenance smiles on those that smile, so does it sympathize with those that weep. If you would have me weep you must first express the passion of grief yourself; then, Telephus or Peleus, your misfortunes hurt me: if you pronounce the parts assigned you ill, I shall ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace

... this, and he then laughed softly. "It's quite natural, and I guess I sympathize with you," he remarked. "In one way, however, your nephew's acquitting himself creditably, considering that there are apparently three people anxious to exert a beneficent influence upon him. The ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss

... "It is not liking. It is worship. Some kind of Pantheism which I cannot explain. Nowhere are the loneliness and grandeur of God so manifested. Mind, I don't quite sympathize with that comparison of St. Augustine's where he detects a resemblance between yon spectra of purple and green and the plumage of a dove. What has a dove to do with such magnificence and grandeur? It was ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan

... of their conversation, the ill-feeling amongst the jury broke out into open fighting, because the English Sparrow was a foreigner, and they said that it would certainly sympathize with the Humans who had brought it to Australia. This was just an excuse to get rid of it. The Sparrow said that it wanted to go out of the jury, and had never wished to belong to it, and flew away joyfully. ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley

... for the utterance, even in his thoughts. He was imaginative enough to understand her despair and sympathize with it. He remembered the sheltered life she had always lived. Besides, she was his goddess; he could only humble himself ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall

... You would feel the same. I also should combat the resolve in you, as you do in me. But in my heart I should understand. I should sympathize, and I ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson

... fine thing to say," Kennon grinned. "But I can sympathize. It took us two months to straighten out Alexandria after the Boss-man sent ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone

... long-drawn, quivering wail could ever disassociate it from tragedy. By and by it ceased, and then I wished it would come again. Steele lay like the stone beside him. Was he ever going to speak? Among the vagaries of my mood was a petulant desire to have him sympathize with me. ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey

... your husband's business affairs, and sympathize with the cares and anxieties which beset him. Distract his mind with pleasant or amusing conversation, when you find him nervous and fagged ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... days with the writer, and then took his departure for Boston, evidently feeling quite conscious of the wonderful feat he had performed, and at the same time it may be safely said that those who witnessed this strange resurrection were not only elated at his success, but were made to sympathize more deeply than ever before with the slave. Also the noble-hearted Smith who boxed him up was made to rejoice over Brown's victory, and was thereby encouraged to render similar service to two other young bondmen, who appealed to him for deliverance. But, unfortunately, ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still

... detestable. They were incessantly bringing some disgrace upon the theatre by their tavern frolics, and their pranks about the country town. All my lectures upon the importance of keeping up the dignity of the profession, and the respectability of the company were in vain. The villains could not sympathize with the delicate feelings of a man in station. They even trifled with the seriousness of stage business. I have had the whole piece interrupted, and a crowded audience of at least twenty-five pounds kept waiting, because the actors had hid away the breeches of Rosalind, ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving

... congestion of the digestive organs, with which, of course, other parts sympathize physiologically, is constipation, very often the result of insufficient exercise, and injurious in many ways. Speakers and singers very generally ride to and from their engagements, so that there is special reason why they should see to it that some time is set aside for ...
— Voice Production in Singing and Speaking - Based on Scientific Principles (Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged) • Wesley Mills

... is the broadest sympathy ever shown by an author. He seems to have been able to sympathize with every kind of human soul in every emergency. He plays with the simple rustics in A Midsummer Night's Dream. The portrait of the serving man Adam, in As You Like It, is as kindly and as discriminating as that of king or nobleman. Though he ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck

... matter had somewhat veered since the first trials which had been held two years before. The soberer of the citizens, recognizing the real impetus which the Marquis's energy and wealth had given to the commercial activity of the West Missouri region, were inclined to sympathize with him. There was a widespread belief that in the matter of the indictment the Marquis ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn

... have shared the same joys and pleasures; a smile or a tear on the face of one has evoked a corresponding emotion and expression on the face of the other. Their co-partnership has become a unity. Even without speaking, they sympathize. Their souls are constantly en rapport. The man is as different as the ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys

... Nero's iniquitous agents savagely and cruelly harassed the provinces under Nero's authority, he could afford no succor, but merely offer this only ease and consolation, that he seemed plainly to sympathize, as a fellow-sufferer, with those who were condemned upon suits and sold. And when lampoons were made upon Nero and circulated and sung everywhere about, he neither prohibited them, nor showed any indignation on behalf of the emperor's agents, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... desiderata I refer to cannot be secured in a democracy, while a few of them have gone so far as to desire a German triumph, because they foolishly thought that the Kaiser would restore the monarchy. None of them, I think, sympathize with German methods; but they have suffered from a century of revolutions, dating from 1820, and attribute these disasters to the anti-Christian ideas of the French Revolution. In America that great movement had beneficent ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy

... Giddings, of the Western Reserve, and Elijah P. Lovejoy, of Illinois, accepted the agitator's commissions and sought to unite the new idealism with the old Americanism. But John Quincy Adams, who had never been a democrat and who did not sympathize with Garrison, became the arch-leader of the abolitionists in Congress from 1836 to his death in 1848. Smarting under the ill-treatment of Southern politicians, it was easy for the able ex-President to become the political exponent of the new anti-Southern agitation. In no other ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd

... again by Lord Cochrane, with ever fresh-force and cogency, in presenting massive petitions to the House, and in introducing into the occasional debates on reform with which the House amused itself a vigour and practicalness in which few other members cared to sympathize. Nor need we enumerate all the meetings, in London and the provinces, in which he took prominent part. It is enough to say that in Parliament he always spoke with exceeding boldness, and that upon the people, notwithstanding the contrary assertions of his detractors, he always enjoined, ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald

... To save her, indeed! Very well, he should see! And forthwith, from that moment, Alice Greggory's chief reason for living became to prove to Mr. M. J. Arkwright that he needed not to teach her, to save her, nor yet to sympathize ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter

... of the English-speaking world. Scott, in writing "Waverley," could take for granted that there lay behind him an intense feeling of nationality, which would show itself not in noisy boastfulness, but in genuine appreciation; that with the matter of his work his countrymen would sympathize, whatever might be their opinion as to its execution. No such supposition could be made by Cooper; no such belief inspired him to exertion. He might hope to create interest; he could not (p. 032) venture to assume its existence. One other incident connected with the composition of this ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury

... by removing the causes thereof, cannot, as a matter of course, sympathize with a plan of brutal suppression. They cannot prevent society from protecting itself after its own fashion against the criminals, whom it cannot allow a free hand; but we demand all the more urgently the radical reformation ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel

... never experienced the tender passion," said Fox Quarternight to our horse wrangler, as he lighted his pipe with a brand from the fire. "Now I have. That's the reason why I sympathize with these old beaus of the bride. Of course I was too old to stand any show on her string, and I reckon the fellow who got her ain't so powerful much, except his veneering and being a stranger, which was a big advantage. To be sure, if she took ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams

... of the restless soul of De Lamennais; but at the last and great crisis of his life we find all our calculations at fault; "we try to understand him; we wish that penetrating into the inmost recesses of his wounded soul, we could force it to yield up its secret, and once more sympathize with him, perhaps console him; but we cannot. He is an enigma, as impenetrable as the rocks on ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell

... of the garrison," she said. "May I not make the acquaintance of these people? Sometimes, the mere knowledge that others are aware of one's troubles and sympathize with one is comforting. Miss Beale is not expecting me till tea time. I told her I might lunch with you. Indeed, I promised to call at her hotel for her letters, and that is halfway on ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy

... Servian youth contracts a regular league of friendship and brotherhood with a bramble-bush, in order to induce it to catch his coy love's clothes, when she flees before his kisses. Even the stars and planets sympathize with human beings, and live in constant intercourse with them and their affairs. Stars become messengers; a proud maiden boasts to be more beautiful than the sun; the sun takes it ill, and is advised to burn her coal-black in revenge. The moon hides herself in the clouds when the ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson

... hill. She had played in childhood with that faithful old soldier. Many a tale had he told her of her gallant father when, as a young man, he gayly rode away to the wars, leaving her lady mother in tears behind. She could sympathize with waiting women now, and understand. Those were such deeds of daring that the rude recital of the old man once stirred her very heart with joy and terror; now she was sick at the thought of them. And Blodgett was gone; he had died ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady



Words linked to "Sympathize" :   feel for, condole with, sympathy, pity, experience, condole, empathize, compassionate, feel



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