When it comes to sympathy and empathy there is a quote I really like, " empathy is walking a mile in somebody else's moccasins. Sympathy is being sorry their feet hurt." - Rebecca O'Donnell. This is a great overview of the differences but there is more to it than that. Sympathy is more of just feeling bad for someone because you know that they are going through a hard time. Where as empathy you know exactly how a person is feeling because you have been in their same position before so it is easier to understand what they are going through. Empathy is an important tool for historians because it can help the historian get a better understanding of why people did certain things the way they did.