“Our sympathy is cold to the relation of distant misery.”

— Edward Gibbon

Vol. 1, Chap. 49.
The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire: Volume 1 (1776)

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Edward Gibbon 43

English historian and Member of Parliament 1737–1794

Roger Zelazny Isle of the Dead

Source: Isle of the Dead (1969), Chapter 4 (p. 87)

“In a distant age and climate, the tragic scene of the death of Husein will awaken the sympathy of the coldest reader.”

Husayn ibn Ali (626–680) The grandson of Muhammad and the son of Ali ibn Abi Talib

Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. 2, p. 218 http://books.google.com/books?id=VvXSAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA218&dq=Edward+Gibbon+Hosein&hl=en&sa=X&ei=4eogT_7ZEZToiALbpIGBCA&ved=0CEkQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=hosein&f=false
Quotes by non-Muslims

“In a distant age and climate the tragic scene of the death of Hussyn will awaken the sympathy of the coldest reader.”

Edward Gibbon (1737–1794) English historian and Member of Parliament

Vol. 5, pages:391–392.
The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire: Volume 1 (1776)

“All over the non-human world, with few exceptions, each being seeks the satisfaction of his own desires, if not with positive disregard for the happiness and misery of the rest of the universe, at least with sincere unconcern. There is no courtesy, sympathy, or amenity there—a cold, heartless, implacable world of strangers.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

Source: Better-World Philosophy: A Sociological Synthesis (1899), The Preponderance of Egoism, p. 123

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

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn book One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

Source: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

“His cold remains all naked to the sky,
On distant shores unwept, unburied lie.”

Homér The Odyssey (Cowper)

XI. 72–73 (tr. Alexander Pope); of Elpenor.
Odyssey (c. 725 BC)

“The relation of landlord and tenant is not an ideal one, but any relations in a social order will endure if there is infused into them some of that spirit of human sympathy, which qualifies life for immortality.”

George William Russell (1867–1935) Irish writer, editor, critic, poet, and artistic painter

Open letter to the Masters of Dublin (1913)
Context: The relation of landlord and tenant is not an ideal one, but any relations in a social order will endure if there is infused into them some of that spirit of human sympathy, which qualifies life for immortality. Despotisms endure while they are benevolent, and aristocracies while noblesse oblige is not a phrase to be referred to with a cynical smile. Even an oligarchy might be permanent if the spirit of human kindness, which harmonises all things otherwise incompatible, is present.

“My heart was fashioned to be susceptible of love and sympathy, and when wrenched by misery to vice and hatred, it did not endure the violence of the change without torture such as you cannot even imagine.”

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus

The monster to Robert Walton in Ch. 24
Frankenstein (1818)

“If there is to be a war between England and the United States, tis impossible for us to pretend sympathy with the former. We shall have allies, not enemies, on the banks of the Columbia, and distant and desolate as are those tracts beyond the Rocky Mountains, even there may arise an opportunity for demanding and regaining our place among the nations.”

John Mitchel (1815–1875) Irish politician

Article in The Nation newspaper on 6 December, 1845, an article entitled "Oregon—Ireland", in reference to the dispute then pending between England and America about Oregon.

“For the first time she had dimly realized that only the hopeless are starkly sincere and that only the unhappy can either give or take sympathy--even some of the bitter and dangerous voluptuousness of misery.”

Jean Rhys (1890–1979) novelist from Dominica

“Our sympathy is cold to the relation of distant misery.”

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Edward Gibbon 43

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