Pitiful Quotes - Page 5

• In their nomination to office they will not appoint to the exercise of authority as to a pitiful job, but as to a holy function.

  Edmund Burke

  Jobs, Exercise, Office

  Edmund Burke (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of Edmund Burke (Illustrated)”, p.1453, Delphi Classics

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• Like a great poet, Nature produces the greatest results with the simplest means. These are simply a sun, trees, flowers, water and love. Of course, if the spectator be without the last, the whole will present but a pitiful appearance, and in that case, the sun is merely so many miles in diameter, the trees are good for fuel, the flowers are classified by stamens, and the water is simply wet.

  Heinrich Heine

  Nature, Flower, Mean

  Heinrich Heine (1873). “Scintillations from the Prose Works of Heinrich Heine: I. Florentine Nights. II. Excerpts”, p.169

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• You are pitiful isolated individuals; you are bankrupts; your role is played out. Go where you belong from now on - into the dustbin of history!

  Leon Trotsky

  History, Roles, Politics

  History of the Russian Revolution ch. 47 (1930) (translation by Max Eastman) See Birrell 1

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• Sleeping alone seemed unnatural to me, and pitiful, something done in hospitals or when you're contagious.

  Barbara Kingsolver

  Sleep, Done, Contagious

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• I did not feel proud of our country, seeing that we were bombing peasant villages, that we were not just hitting military targets, that children were being killed. We were terrorizing the North Vietnamese with our enormous Air Force. They had no Air Force at all. They were a little pitiful country and we were terrorizing them with our bombs. And no, I did not feel proud at all.

  Howard Zinn

  Country, Children, Military

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• PITIFUL, adj. The state of an enemy or opponent after an imaginary encounter with oneself.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Enemy, Encounters, Opponents

  Ambrose Bierce (2016). “The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World”, p.165, 谷月社

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• For what you call the Law is but a club of the rich over the lowest of men, sanctifying the conquest of the earth by a few and making their theft the way of things. But over and above these pitiful statutes of yours that enclose the common land and reduce us to poverty to make you fat stands the Law of Creation, which renders judgement on rich and poor alike, making them one. For freedom is the man who will thus turn the world upside down, therefore no wonder he has enemies

  Gerrard Winstanley

  Freedom, Men, Law

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• Life is comic or pitiful as soon as the high ends of being fade out of sight, and man becomes near-sighted, and can only attend towhat addresses the senses.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Sight, Religion

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.194

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• We've all got our own brand of problems. You can be pitiful or powerful. Take your pick.

  Joyce Meyer

  Powerful, Problem, Brands

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• When I finally did stop and look at my life, I realized that I had done what I'd set out to do. In my pitiful little way, I had climbed the mountain I had chosen. And there I was, on top.

  Bette Midler

  Mountain, Looks, Done

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• I think Americans are so poor it's pitiful, because you don't understand the natural world at all.

  Bill Mollison

  Thinking, World, Natural

  "Permaculture: Design For Living". Interview with Alan AtKisson, www.context.org. 1991.

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• Capitalism has proven to be a far more terrible system than Marx could ever bring himself to imagine. Those who are so deluded as to find something good in it, or even feel loyalty toward it, are its most pitiful victims.

  Allen W. Wood

  Loyalty, Imagine, Victim

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• I consider it an indubitable mark of mean-spiritedness and pitiful vanity to court applause from the pen or tongue of man.

  George Washington

  Mean, Men, Vanity

  François Jean marquis de Chastellux, George Washington (1828). “Travels in North-America, in the Years 1780-81-82”, p.396

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• I've been to those places where it's 'poor, pitiful me.'

  Dolly Parton

  Poor

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• You can't be pitiful AND powerful.

  Joyce Meyer

  Powerful

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• So when the wolf pounces on your lamb, just ignore the pitiful bleating and remind yourself that this is a democracy, where every sheep can freely express its preference for which kind of wolf it wants to be eaten by. Many sheep, perhaps understandably, prefer a wolf in sheep's clothing, which is after all the basic idea of democracy. So far it has worked pretty well. The wolves all agree on that, and they want to spread democracy everywhere.

  Joseph Sobran

  Sheep, Ideas, Democracy

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• Put your ear down to the Bible, and hear Him bid you go and pull sinners out of the fire of sin. Put your ear down to the burdened, agonized heart of humanity, and listen to its pitiful wail for help.

  William Booth

  Heart, Fire, Humanity

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• The crushing, pitiful, and frequently just plain risible pathos of an unsuccessful actor/performer's life is well charted.

  Arabella Weir

  Crush, Actors, Life Is

  "Auditions are hell, but I never thought that I would have to go through 'casting' to get on Newsnight - and fail" by Arabella Weir, www.theguardian.com. May 25, 2006.

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• [On the socialites in New York in the Nineties who devoted themselves to politics, charities, and other volunteer work:] I never knew but one woman who devoted her life exclusively to the social game. She ended her days arranging dinner parties with paper dolls, a breakdown pitiful to watch.

  Margaret Case Harriman

  New York, Party, Games

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• Complaint is. more contemptible than pitiful.

  Christian Nestell Bovee

  Complaining, Complaints

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• Isn't my fur stole pitiful? How unsuccessful can a girl look? People think I'm wearing anchovies. The worst of it is, I trapped these under my own sink.

  Phyllis Diller

  Girl, Thinking, People

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• People take England on trust, and repeat that Shakespeare is the greatest of all authors. I have read him: there is nothing that compares Racine or Corneille: his plays are unreadable, pitiful.

  Napoleon Bonaparte

  Reading, Play, People

  Napoleon Bonaparte (2008). “The Corsican”, p.469, Wildside Press LLC

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• In a business society, the role of sex can be summed up in five pitiful little words. There is money in it.

  Margaret Halsey

  Sex, Business, Roles

  Margaret Halsey (1952). “The Folks at Home”

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• No woman need fear the effect of absence upon the man who honestly loves her. The needle of the compass, regardless of intervening seas, points forever toward the north. Pitiful indeed is she who fails to be a magnet and blindly becomes a chain.

  Myrtle Reed

  Men, Sea, Forever

  Myrtle Reed, Mary Badollet Powell (1911). “The Myrtle Reed Year Book: Epigrams and Opinions from the Writings and Sayings of Myrtle Reed”

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• now I am capable of youth, but not capable of few years - that is the pitiful thing.

  Helen Westley

  Years, Age, Youth

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