What's the difference between compassion and sympathy?

Compassion


Definition:

  • (n.) Literally, suffering with another; a sensation of sorrow excited by the distress or misfortunes of another; pity; commiseration.
  • (v. t.) To pity.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) I woke up yesterday morning with an inbox, in full capacity of love and compassion,” she wrote.
  • (2) These boys showed a lack of compassion to our daughter and to their community as a whole."
  • (3) Speaking at a film festival in Dubai he said: "My compass has not stopped spinning," referring to the many policy switches made by the party he previously supported.
  • (4) The letter is particularly striking given that some of signatories are on the party's centre right, such as Progress and Policy Network, and others on the left, such as key figures at Compass and Class.
  • (5) Male eastern red-spotted newts (Notophthalmus viridescens) under controlled laboratory conditions exhibit unimodal magnetic compass orientation either in a trained compass direction or in the direction of their home pond.
  • (6) The grand mufti of Australia, Ibrahim Abu Mohammad, said Islam did not need a reformation “since the normative principles and practices of the religion allow Muslims to harmoniously coexist within pluralist societies that are based on the universal values of compassion and justice”.
  • (7) What it says is that their moral code is lacking any kind of compass we can endorse,” said Sharan Burrow, the Ituc general secretary.
  • (8) There has been a great deal of media coverage about the need for staff to demonstrate compassion.
  • (9) It seems that Mrs May’s vicarage upbringing has left her more than a little lacking in Christian compassion.
  • (10) When Malcolm Turnbull was asked about Asha specifically he said he wouldn’t comment on individual cases but that we’ll be treating all people with compassion.
  • (11) What an inspiration: teaching us all to embrace life, look after each other, and have love and compassion no matter what May 14, 2014 Comedian Jason Manford, who championed Stephen's cause and helped him surpass his fundraising goal, released a statement on Wednesday afternoon: Guardian readers have also added their tributes in the comments of the article about his death, with one reflecting on the way Stephen mastered social media in order to raise money for charity and document his story.
  • (12) I’m sure if my father was around, if he had the opportunity to meet her he would be reminding her that compassion was important, that ethics in public life was important, and that compromise was important.
  • (13) Staff do not always honour the pledge on compassion in the NHS Constitution to "respond with humanity and kindness to each person's pain, distress, anxiety or need", he added.
  • (14) More than that, the proposition acts as a compass for Labour policy proposals ie: "How does a particular policy contribute towards work, public income and a caring society?"
  • (15) In a letter to the prime minister he urged Cameron to show “compassion and human kindness” .
  • (16) It is essential, then, in order to lessen the tendency toward neurosis, that such women be treated with compassion, competence, patience and psychiatric care, and that they be made fully aware of surgical procedures and its consequences, as well as the advantages of eugenics.
  • (17) It's music that defines compassion, lament, and loss, to which you can only surrender in moist-eyed wonder.
  • (18) But there is a difference between knowledge of other peoples and other times that is the result of understanding, compassion, careful study and analysis for their own sakes, and on the other hand knowledge that is part of an overall campaign of self-affirmation.
  • (19) For our government at the highest levels to suggest that when it comes to asylum seekers at sea there is no moral compass and no moral limit is not only astonishing and appalling but completely unacceptable,” he said.
  • (20) The norms, practices and capabilities of teams contribute to the formation of effective working relationships and determine whether there is a micro-climate that allows compassion to thrive.

Sympathy


Definition:

  • (n.) Feeling corresponding to that which another feels; the quality of being affected by the affection of another, with feelings correspondent in kind, if not in degree; fellow-feeling.
  • (n.) An agreement of affections or inclinations, or a conformity of natural temperament, which causes persons to be pleased, or in accord, with one another; as, there is perfect sympathy between them.
  • (n.) Kindness of feeling toward one who suffers; pity; commiseration; compassion.
  • (n.) The reciprocal influence exercised by the various organs or parts of the body on one another, as manifested in the transmission of a disease by unknown means from one organ to another quite remote, or in the influence exerted by a diseased condition of one part on another part or organ, as in the vomiting produced by a tumor of the brain.
  • (n.) That relation which exists between different persons by which one of them produces in the others a state or condition like that of himself. This is shown in the tendency to yawn which a person often feels on seeing another yawn, or the strong inclination to become hysteric experienced by many women on seeing another person suffering with hysteria.
  • (n.) A tendency of inanimate things to unite, or to act on each other; as, the sympathy between the loadstone and iron.
  • (n.) Similarity of function, use office, or the like.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Hulk Hogan’s status as a public figure, even one who holds forth often and at length about his sex life, may have kept him from getting the kind of sympathy that the subject of the escort story immediately received, but there’s no evidence Bollea intended for anyone to see the tape.
  • (2) Former Tory minister Edwina Currie has tweeted that she had "no sympathy" for food bank users, that they were just "opportunists".
  • (3) With Fury, I’m not going to have no remorse, I’m not going to have no sympathy.
  • (4) I have no quarrel with the overall thrust of Andrew Rawnsley's argument that the south-east is over-dominant in the UK economy and, as someone who has lived and worked both in Cardiff and Newcastle upon Tyne, I have sympathy with the claims of the north-east of England as well as Wales (" No wonder the coalition hasn't many friends in the north ", Comment).
  • (5) He added: “I have no sympathy for real paedophiles.
  • (6) But obviously if people have been injured or indeed killed that is a tragedy and our sympathies are with the victims and their families.” He added: “We never condone violence – whatever the cause.
  • (7) A Facebook page created for friends, family and well-wishers to write messages of sympathy was filling with tributes.
  • (8) Kafka's faceless and amoral heroes, on the other hand, inspire no sympathy at all.
  • (9) There was little sympathy from the Lib Dems' coalition partners in the Conservative party.
  • (10) A year after the establishment of the so-called caliphate by Islamic State , western governments are struggling for strategies to challenge sympathy among their citizens towards the militants.
  • (11) You could think the narrator's extreme failures of sympathy are despicable, but this would surely be beside the point.
  • (12) Its coverage was so vindictive and blatantly unfair that it succeeded in winning sympathy for the prime minister, not an easy thing to do these days.
  • (13) The curator Clare Browne has a certain sympathy for Bock – “he was a serious collector, and he saved many pieces which would otherwise certainly have been destroyed” – but even she is startled that he ran his scissors straight through the figure of Christ, sparing only the face, which ended up in the V&A’s half.
  • (14) Speaking at a press conference following the preview of his latest film, Melancholia, von Trier expressed sympathy for Hitler, remarked that Israel was "a pain in the arse" and jokingly confessed to being a Nazi .
  • (15) The Labour leader is determined to retain autonomy on policy and to avoid being dictated to by his party when he is not in sympathy with the message it is giving him.
  • (16) Too many of his answers start with, “I have some sympathy with what you say, but...”; he comes across as just another politician.
  • (17) He has little sympathy for those displaced along the way.
  • (18) This includes the carbon content of fuels, driver behaviour, infrastructure, as well as the potential of car connectivity and intelligent transport systems (ITS).” The industry’s position has won the sympathy of oil companies, which also oppose fuel economy targets for 2025 and 2030.
  • (19) "I've got a great deal of sympathy with the situationist position.
  • (20) Perhaps monstering earns underdog sympathy, with contempt for the press as rife as contempt for conventional politics.