PITY QUOTES
quotations about pity
Pity makes suffering contagious.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
The Antichrist
So kind and tender Pity is,
She pitieth even Sin!
And fain, through Heaven's blessed gate,
Would pass the culprit in.
J. Q. A. WOOD
"Pity 'Tis 'Tis So", Arthur's Home Magazine, March 1869
Pity is always twinged with disgust.
DANIEL QUINN
The Holy
Pity is a hierarchical concept. It implies a looking down upon another. It is condescension. Pity arises out of the maintenance of distance between people. It has nothing of the adventure of intimacy and commitment that are essential to compassion.
ANDREW PURVES
The Search for Compassion
God put self-pity by the side of despair like the cure by the side of the disease.
ALBERT CAMUS
Notebooks
We pity in others only those evils which we have ourselves experienced.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU
Emile
If the secret sorrows of everyone could be read on their forehead, how many who now cause envy would suddenly become the objects of pity?
ITALIAN PROVERB
Pity is more spectator-like than compassion; we can pity people while maintaining a safe emotional distance from them.
AARON BEN-ZE'EV
The Subtlety of Emotions
When men are about to commit, or sanction the commission of some injustice, it is not uncommon for them to express pity for the object either of that or some parallel proceeding, and to feel themselves, at the time, quite virtuous and moral, and immensely superior to those who express no pity at all. This is a kind of upholding of faith above works, and is very comfortable.
CHARLES DICKENS
Nicholas Nickleby
"This is pity," he thought, and then he lifted his head in wonder. He thought that there must be something terribly wrong with a world in which this monstrous feeling is called a virtue.
AYN RAND
The Fountainhead
Pity must join together those whom wrath has torn in sunder.
WILLIAM BLAKE
Jerusalem
If Pity come as Pity, bid her stay;
But if in guise of Love, chase her away.
RICHARD GARNETT
De Flagello Myrtes
I have no pity! I have no pity! The more worms writhe, the more I yearn to crush out their entrails! It is a moral teething, and I grind with greater energy, in proportion to the increase of pain.
EMILY BRONTË
Wuthering Heights
Pity is imagination or fiction of future calamity to ourselves, proceeding from the sense of another man's present calamity; but when it lighteth on such as we think have not deserved the same, the compassion is greater, because then there appeareth the more probability that the same may happen to us. For the evil that happeneth to an innocent man, may happen to every man.
THOMAS HOBBES
The Elements of Law Natural and Politic
O, brother man! fold to thy heart thy brother;
Where pity dwells, the peace of God is there;
To worship rightly is to love each other,
Each smile a hymn, each kindly deed a prayer.
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
The Opal
If you wish me well, do not stand pitying me, but lend me some succour as fast as you can; for pity is but cold comfort when one is up to the chin in water, and within a hair's breadth of starving or drowning.
AESOP
Fables
Don't pity me ever, even when them haters answering
Mindstate of the victim, no victim, I'm just a champion
Money come in slow, God, intervene
Spirit's never broken, I'm just focused, don't pity me
No no no, you see this pain put a strain on my whole life
I seen the rain, seen my dreams turn to long nights
But all I ask is don't pity me, no, no!
Don't pity me, no, no, no!
J. COLE
"Pity"
Every deed of mercy and every act of charity and every thought of pity is like the balm of Gilead to our souls.
CLARENCE DARROW
A Persian Pearl and Other Essays
Pity is not natural to man. Children are always cruel. Savages are always cruel. Pity is acquired and improved by the cultivation of reason. We may have uneasy sensations from seeing a creature in distress, without pity; for we have not pity unless we wish to relieve them. When I am on my way to dine with a friend, and finding it late, have bid the coachman make haste, if I happen to attend when he whips his horses, I may feel unpleasantly that the animals are put to pain, but I do not wish him to desist. No, sir, I wish him to drive on.
SAMUEL JOHNSON
attributed, The Life of Samuel Johnson
He best can pity who has felt the woe.
JOHN GAY
Dione