George Henry Lewes Quotes

When anyone escapes, my heart / leaps up. Even when it's I who am escaped from, / I am half on the side of the leaver.

To our own sorrows serious heed we give, But for another?s we soon cease to grieve.

I don't really have a lot of appropriate feelings for people on an individual basis, but I've always wanted to make people happy.

Those whom we can love, we can hate; to others we are indifferent.

I feel like there is a real lack of empathy - not just in American society, it's definitely happening in Britain as well - and it's heartbreaking that people can see something and not feel it.

Gretchen shrugged. "After seeing how he acted when she almost died, I'm starting to get why she's with him." Then her voice hardened. "And really, Leila. That's twice now.

Can I see another's woe, And not be in sorrow too? Can I see another's grief, And not seek for kind relief? Can I see a falling tear, And not feel my sorrow's share? Can a father see his child Weep, nor be with sorrow filled? Can a mother sit and hear An infant groan, an infant fear? No, no! never can it be! Never, never can it be!

A man can gasp out his life beside you-and you feel none of it. Pity, Sympathy, sure-but you don't feel the pain. Your belly is whole and that's what counts. A half-yard away someone's world is snuffled out in roaring agony-and you feel nothing. That's the misery of the world.

Pity, I've learned, is like a fart. You can tolerate your own, but you simply can't stand anyone else's.

Compassion is a mixed passion, composed of love and sorrow.

One can show no greater respect than to weep for a stranger.

the very fact of the death of someone close to them aroused in all who heard about it, as always, a feeling of delight that he had died and they hadn't.

When I saw photographs of children murdered by the Fascist, I felt furious pity. When the supporters of Franco talked of Red atrocities, I merely felt indignant that people should tell such lies. In the first case I saw corpses, in the second only words. . . I gradually acquired a certain horror of the way in which my own mind worked. It was clear to me that unless I cared about every murdered child impartially, I did not really care about children being murdered at all.

One does not really feel much grief at other people's sorrows; one tries, and puts on a melancholy face, thinking oneself brutal for not caring more; but one cannot and it is better, for if one grieved too deeply at other people's tears, life would be unendurable; and every man has sufficient sorrows of his own without taking to heart his neighbour's.

I think I love most people best when they are in adversity; for pity is one of my prevailing passions.

We often quarrel with the unfortunate to get rid of pitying them.

When you're cold, don't expect sympathy from someone who's warm.

What are the sorrows of other men to us, and what their joy?

Like most men, my father is interested in action. And this is why he disappoints my mother when she tells him she doesn't feel well and he offers to take her to the doctor. He is focused on what he can do, whereas she wants sympathy.

There is in Aristotle an almost complete absence of what may be called benevolence or philanthropy. The sufferings of mankind . . . there is no evidence that they cause him unhappiness except when the sufferers happen to be his friends.

Nobody is going to feel sorry for me if I've lost a dollar or $100m.

What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, That he should weep for her?

In general, indulgence for those we know is rarer than pity for those we know not.

‎Pick ten strangers and stick them in a room, and ask them which of us they feel sorrier for - you or me - and we all know who they'll choose.