If all of our lives did not share the same foundation, nothing could explain our sense of sympathy.
There is no quicker means of mollifying rage, even a righteous one, than by saying to the angry person: “But look—he’s unfortunate!” For sympathy is to anger what rain is to fire. Anyone who is angry at another person and thinks of doing him harm should vividly imagine having already done this deed and that they are now looking at the person who is suffering in body or spirit, or struggling against necessity and poverty, and can say to themselves: this is my handiwork. If nothing else, this will extinguish their rage.
— Schopenhauer
The straight path or the code of conduct that should be followed is not foreign to people. What is foreign to people, i.e. what disagrees with their nature, must not be accepted as a code of conduct. A carpenter, hewing an axe handle, has a specimen of what he is making before him. Taking into his hands the handle of the axe with which he is hewing, he looks at it from this and that side and, after making a new axe handle, examines them both in order to see how similar they are. Likewise, a wise person finds the right code of conduct by nourishing the same feelings towards others as he nourishes towards himself. He does not do to others that which he does not wish done to him.
— Confucius
When you scold someone and quarrel with them, you forget that all human beings are your brothers, and you are making yourself their enemy instead of being their friend. You are harming yourself by doing this because when you stopped being a kind and sociable creature, the way God made you, and instead became a wild animal, which sneaks up on its prey and tears it to pieces, you lost your most precious possession. You can feel the loss of a wallet filled with money, why then do you not feel the loss of your greatest treasure: the goodness of your soul?
— Epictetus
There are many people more unfortunate than you. Granted, this adage cannot serve as a roof under which one could live, but it is enough to provide shelter from a downpour.
— Lichtenberg
You groan from your misfortunes. If only you remembered what others have to endure, you would complain less about your own suffering.
— Solon
True sympathy begins only when you experience real suffering by imagining yourself in the shoes of the one who is suffering.
