The sympathy of most people consists of a mixture of good-humor, curiosity, and self-importance – Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

It is certain my belief gains quite infinitely the very moment I can convince another mind thereof – Novalis.

He watched and wept and prayed and felt for all – Oliver Goldsmith.

The greatest pleasures of which the human mind is susceptible are the pleasures of consciousness and sympathy – Parke Godwin.

There are secret ties, there are sympathies, by the sweet relationship of which souls that are well matched attach themselves to each other, and are affected by I know not what, which cannot be explained – Pierre Corneille.

One man pins me to the wall, while with another I walk among the stars – Ralph Waldo Emerson.

We owe to man higher succors than food and fire. We owe to man, man – Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Remembering with you…
…the life of someone so dear

With Sincerest Sympathy

*

May hope and peace
be yours today and always.

With Sympathy

*

The sorrow of the faithful
is not that of permanent loss,
but the tender sense of sadness
that comes in saying good-bye for now
to someone we love.
May today’s sorrow give way
to the peace and
comfort of God’s love.

And with the morn those angel faces smile
Which I have loved long since and lost awhile.
~John Henry Newma

The angels are always near to those who are grieving, to whisper to them that their loved ones are safe in the hand of God.  ~Quoted in The Angels’ Little Instruction Book by Eileen Elias Freeman, 1994

Good-night! good-night! as we so oft have said
Beneath this roof at midnight, in the days
That are no more, and shall no more return.
Thou hast but taken up thy lamp and gone to bed;
I stay a little longer, as one stays
To cover up the embers that still burn.
~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Unable are the loved to die.  For love is immortality.  ~Emily Dickinson

If tears could build a stairway,
And memories a lane,
I’d walk right up to Heaven
And bring you home again.
~Author Unknow

It is the will of God and Nature that these mortal bodies be laid aside, when the soul is to enter into real life; ’tis rather an embrio state, a preparation for living; a man is not completely born until he be dead:  Why then should we grieve that a new child is born among the immortals?  ~Benjamin Franklin, 22 February 1756

With what a deep devotedness of woe
I wept thy absence – o’er and o’er again
Thinking of thee, still thee, till thought grew pain,
And memory, like a drop that, night and day,
Falls cold and ceaseless, wore my heart away!
~Thomas Moore

For some moments in life there are no words.  ~David Seltzer, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory