Pity Quotes - Page 8

• Pity the mother who assumes the name without being all this implies!

  Amos Bronson Alcott

  Mother, Names, Assuming

  Amos Bronson Alcott (1877). “Table-talk”

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• How can one be compassionate if you belong to any religion, follow any guru, believe in something, believe in your scriptures, and so on, attached to a conclusion? When you accept your guru, you have come to a conclusion, or when you strongly believe in god or in a saviour, this or that, can there be compassion? You may do social work, help the poor out of pity, out of sympathy, out of charity, but is all that love and compassion?

  Jiddu Krishnamurti

  Believe, Compassion, Charity

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• All pity is self-pity.

  W. H. Auden

  Self, Self Pity

  "The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays" by W. H. Auden, ("Interlude: West's Disease"), (p. 243), 1962.

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• Self-pity? I see no moral objections to it, the smell drives people away, but that's a practical objection, and occasionally an advantage.

  E. M. Forster

  Self, Smell, People

  "Commonplace Book". Book by E. M. Forster, 1985.

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• Do you not think that sometimes when matters are at the worst with us, when we appear to have done all which we ourselves can do, yet all has been unavailing, and we have only shown we cannot, not we will not, help ourselves; that often just then something comes, almost as if supernaturally, to settle for us, as if our guardian angel took pity on our perplexities, and then at last obtained leave to help us? And if it be so, then what might only be a coincidence becomes a call of Providence, a voice from Heaven, a command.

  James Anthony Froude

  Angel, Thinking, Voice

  James Anthony Froude (1849). “The nemesis of faith”, p.37

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• I learn to pity woes so like my own.

  John Dryden

  Woe, My Own

  John Dryden, C. B., Esquire Charles BATHURST (1852). “Selections from the poetry of Dryden, including his plays and translations. [The editor's preface signed: C. B., i.e. Charles Bathurst.]”, p.298

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• Pity is the feeling of well-intentioned people who are unable to act.

  Pramoedya Ananta Toer

  People, Feelings, Wells

  Pramoedya Ananta Toer (1996). “This Earth of Mankind”, Penguin Books

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• What a pity that the only way to heaven is in a hearse.

  Bill Vaughan

  Heaven, Way, Miscellaneous

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• No love or pity, pardon or excuse should soften the sharp pang of reparation for the guilty man.

  Louisa May Alcott

  Men, Guilt, Excuse

  Louisa May Alcott (1997). “A Long Fatal Love Chase”, Thorndike Pr

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• Let me set my mournful ditty To a merry measure; Thou wilt never come for pity, Thou wilt come for pleasure; Pity then will cut away Those cruel wings, and thou wilt stay.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Cutting, Wings, Pleasure

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (1847). “The Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley”, p.294

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• How many of our virtues originate in the fear of Death & that while we flatter ourselves that we are melting in Christian Sensibility over the sorrows of our human Brethren and Sisteren, we are in fact, tho' perhaps unconsciously, moved at the prospect of our own End for who sincerely pities Sea-sickness, Toothache, or a fit of the Gout in a lusty Good-liver of 50?

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Christian, Sea, Sorrow

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1956). “Collected Letters: 1820-1825”

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• I've built many doorways and set out traps so that no one will be able to reach this place. That's what the angel said. This is a castle of darkness for the angel and I alone. Only within this yielding gloom can I lament the misfortune that has rained down all around me, only here am I permitted to scorn and pity the ugliness, the filthiness of how I smile and pretend at being pure in the light of day.

  Mizuki Nomura

  Angel, Light, Darkness

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• It's hard to play a continuing character like Loomis for nearly 11 years and simply wash your hands of him. It seems a pity.

  Donald Pleasence

  Character, Hands, Years

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• Over all crowds there seems to float a vague distress, an atmosphere of pervasive melancholy, as if any large gathering of people creates an aura of terror and pity.

  Emile Zola

  People, Atmosphere, Gathering

  Emile Zola (1984). “The Attack on the Mill and Other Stories”, Oxford University Press, USA

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• La parole humaine est comme un chaudron fe"  le   o  u' nous battons des me  lodies a'   faire danser les ours, quand on voudrait attendrir les e  toiles. Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, when all the time we are longing to move the stars to pity.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Stars, Moving, Speech

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• Every hand and every hour should be devoted to rescue the world from its insanity of guilt, and to assuage the pangs of human hearts with balm and anodyne. To pity distress is but human; to relieve it is Godlike.

  Horace Mann

  Heart, Hands, Insanity

  Horace Mann (1867). “Lectures and Annual Reports on Education”, p.325

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• Loneliness, dejection, the contempt or pity of people around you--these are unpleasant feelings. But they are precisely the things that produce genuine Dark Ones.

  Sergei Lukyanenko

  Loneliness, Dark, People

  Sergei Lukyanenko, Vladimir Nikolaevich Vasilʹev (2007). “Day watch”, Miramax

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• Pity, I've learned, is like a fart. You can tolerate your own, but you simply can't stand anyone else's.

  Jonathan Tropper

  I've Learned, Fart, Tolerate

  Jonathan Tropper (2007). “How to Talk to a Widower”, p.99, Bantam

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• God pity us indeed, for we are human, And do not always see, The vision when it comes, the shining change, Or, if we see it, do not follow it, Because it is too hard, too strange, too new, Too unbelievable, too difficult, Warring too much with common, easy ways, And now I know this, standing in this light, Who have been half alive these many years, Brooding on my own sorrow, my own pain, Saying "I am a barren bough. Expect, Nor fruit nor blossom from a barren bough."

  Stephen Vincent Benet

  Pain, Light, Years

  "A Child Is Born". Poetic Christmas drama in one act by Stephen Vincent Benet (first presented on radio as part of the anthology program "Cavalcade of America"), December 21, 1942.

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• I'm going to do my thing and if you react a certain way - with pity or with anger - that's up to you.

  Jennifer Lawrence

  Way, Up To You, Certain

  "Best Actress Nominee Jennifer Lawrence Heats Up Winter’s Bone". Interview with Brad Balfour, www.huffingtonpost.com. February 25, 2011.

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• It’s hard to feel hurt or frightened when you’re flooded with pity.

  Lindy West

  Hurt, Frightened, Feels

  "What happened when I confronted my cruellest troll" by Lindy West, www.theguardian.com. February 2, 2015.

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• I remember thinking, without pride of self-pity, that I was not rich or poor, that I wasn't good or bad. But that was difficult: to be neither good nor bad. It seemed to me, in the end, the same as being bad.

  Alejandro Zambra

  Pride, Thinking, Rich Or Poor

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• Do not be deceived by the way men of bad faith misuse words and names … Things are set up as contraries that are not even in the same category. Listen to me: the opposite of radical is superficial, the opposite of liberal is stingy; the opposite of conservative is destructive. Thus I will describe myself as a radical conservative liberal; but certain of the tainted red fish will swear that there can be no such fish as that. Beware of those who use words to mean their opposites. At the same time have pity on them, for usually this trick is their only stock in trade.

  R. A. Lafferty

  Mean, Men, Opposites

  "The Flame is Green" by R. A. Lafferty, (Ch. 5), 1971.

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• Alternate translation: Come brethren, if you have a mind to be ingrafted in the vine, It is a pity to see you lopped off in this manner From the stock. Reckon up the prelates in the very see of Peter; And in that order of fathers see which has succeeded which. This is the rock over which the proud gates of hell prevail not.

  Saint Augustine

  Father, Order, Rocks

  "Our Church, Her Children and Institutions", Volume 1, by Henry Coyle, Angel Guardian Press, Boston, (p. 98), 1908.

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

  Willa Cather

  Way, Masters, Servant

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