PITY QUOTES II

quotations about pity

Pity quote

Take out pity and the whole structure of our traditional morality crumbles to pieces.

FRANK THILLY

Popular Science Monthly, December 1905


And pity--people who inspire it in you are actually very powerful people. To get someone else to take care of you, to feel sorry for you--that takes a lot of strength, smarts, manipulation. Very powerful people.

DEB CALETTI

The Secret Life of Prince Charming


Pity is sworn servant unto love:
And this be sure, wherever it begin
To make the way, it lets your master in.

SAMUEL DANIEL

The Queen's Arcadia

Tags: Samuel Daniel


Pity is occasioned by another's suffering but is conjoined with a disposition to keep that suffering alive and salient as a symptom of a claimed deep understanding of the despair that this earthly life engenders.

REX WELSHON

"Friedrich Nietzsche: The Genealogy of Morals"


Pity those who don't feel anything at all.

SARAH J. MAAS

A Court of Thorns and Roses


I'd rather have anybody's hate than their pity.

S. E. HINTON

The Outsiders


And pity, like a naked newborn babe,
Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubim, horsed
Upon the sightless couriers of the air,
Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,
That tears shall drown the wind.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Macbeth

Tags: William Shakespeare


The recognition of pain and fear in others give rise in us to pity, and in our pity is our humanity, our redemption.

DEAN KOONTZ

Velocity

Tags: Dean Koontz


To a sensitive being, pity is not seldom pain.

HERMAN MELVILLE

Bartleby

Tags: Herman Melville


A woman's pity often opens the door to love.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit

Tags: Henry Ward Beecher


Pity is like lust ... both like to masquerade as love and it's powerfully hard to know the difference when you're in the throes of it.

MICHELLE BLACK

Solomon Spring


Those who do not complain are never pitied.

JANE AUSTEN

Pride and Prejudice

Tags: Jane Austen


It is easy to pity when once one's vanity has been tickled.

WILLA CATHER

"On the Divide", The Troll Garden

Tags: Willa Cather


Shouldest not thou also have had compassion on thy fellowservant, even as I had pity on thee?

BIBLE

Matthew 18:33

Tags: Bible quotes


There are two kinds of pity. One, the weak and sentimental kind, which is really no more than the heart's impatience to be rid as quickly as possible of the painful emotion aroused by the sight of another's unhappiness, that pity which is not compassion, but only an instinctive desire to fortify one's own soul against the sufferings of another; and the other, the only one that counts, the unsentimental but creative kind, which knows what it is about and is determined to hold out, in patience and forbearance, to the very limit of its strength and even beyond.

STEFAN ZWEIG

Beware of Pity

Tags: Stefan Zweig


Pity, and forbearance, and long-sufferance, and fair interpretation, and excusing our brother, and taking in the best sense, and passing the gentlest sentence, are as certainly our duty, and owing to every person that does offend and can repent, as calling to account can be owing to the law, and are first to be paid; and he that does not so is an unjust person.

JEREMY TAYLOR

The Saturday Magazine, July 18, 1835

Tags: Jeremy Taylor


To be the object of pity is a situation very humiliating. For although Pity is said to be fitter to love, and a certain degree of tender affection is always mixed with it, there is no doubt at the same time such an inferiority in being pitied as is not consistent with dignity of character.

ANONYMOUS

London Magazine, February 1780


You get some of my sympathy, but your self-pity gets none of my sympathy because self-pity is the ugliest emotion in humanity. Get rid of it, because no one's going to like you if you feel sorry for yourself. The irony is we'll feel sorry for you, if you stop feeling sorry for yourself. Just grow up.

STEPHEN FRY

"Stephen Fry criticised for telling 'self-pitying' abuse victims to grow up", The Guardian, April 12, 2016


To love with the spirit is to pity, and he who pities most loves most. Men aflame with a burning charity towards their neighbours are thus enkindled because they have touched the depth of their own misery, their own apparentiality, their own nothingness, and then, turning their newly opened eyes upon their fellows, they have seen that they also are miserable, apparential, condemned to nothingness, and they have pitied them and loved them.

MIGUEL DE UNAMUNO

Tragic Sense of Life

Tags: Miguel de Unamuno


Pity is like eating mustard without beef.

AUGUSTUS JOHN CUTHBERT HARE

The Story of My Life