"It is in Rousseau's writing above all that history begins to turn from upper-class honour to middle-class humanitarianism. Pity, sympathy and compassion lie at the centre of his moral vision. Values associated with the feminine begin to infiltrate social existence as a whole, rather than being confined to the domestic sphere.“

-Terry Eagleton

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Terry Eagleton quote about sympathy: "It is in Rousseau's writing above all that history begins to turn from upper-class honour to middle-..."

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"One side-effect of the so-called war on terror has been a crisis of liberalism. This is not only a question of alarmingly illiberal legislation, but a more general problem of how the liberal state deals with its anti-liberal enemies."

-Terry Eagleton

"The British are supposed to be particularly averse to intellectuals, a prejudice closely bound up with their dislike of foreigners. Indeed, one important source of this Anglo-Saxon distaste for highbrows and eggheads was the French revolution, which was seen as an attempt to reconstruct society on the basis of abstract rational principles."

-Terry Eagleton

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"For the liberal state to accommodate a diversity of beliefs while having few positive convictions is one of the more admirable achievements of civilization."

-Terry Eagleton

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"The conversion of agnostic High Tories to the Anglican church is always rather suspect. It seems too pat and predictable, too clearly a matter of politics rather than faith."

-Terry Eagleton

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"Poetry is the most subtle of the literary arts, and students grow more ingenious by the year at avoiding it. If they can nip around Milton, duck under Blake and collapse gratefully into the arms of Jane Austen, a lot of them will."

-Terry Eagleton

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"Most poetry in the modern age has retreated to the private sphere, turning its back on the political realm."

-Terry Eagleton

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"I have the greatest sympathy with the growth of the socialist party. I think they understand the evils that surround us and hammer them into people's minds better than we Liberals."

-Charles Trevelyan

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"Captain Hale, alone, without sympathy or support, save that from above, on the near approach of death asked for a clergyman to attend him. It was refused. He then requested a Bible that too was refused by his inhuman jailer."

-William Hull

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"I didn't feel any remorse or sympathy if I injured a rival. I went over the top a few times but I never broke anyone's leg."

-Peter Storey

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"It is the right of our people to organize to oppose any law and any part of the Constitution with which they are not in sympathy."

-Alfred E. Smith

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"There's a certain amount of sympathy here for the Bush administration's problem, which is they would like to get rid of Saddam Hussein and they would like to have the Kurds autonomous."

-Les Aspin

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"Teetotallers lack the sympathy and generosity of men that drink."

-W. H. Davies

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