Pathetic Quotes - Page 5

• They separate us into groups. The Ringleaders and the Others. I belong to the Ringleaders because my weak, pathetic, traitorous, fundamentally base peers point to me when someone asks them who is in charge.

  Melina Marchetta

  Groups, Peers, Weak

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• It now lately sometimes seemed a black miracle to me that people could actually care deeply about a subject or pursuit, and could go on caring this way for years on end. Could dedicate their entire lives to it. It seemed admirable and at the same time pathetic. We are all dying to give our lives away to something, maybe.

  David Foster Wallace

  Caring, Years, People

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• He takes out a cigarette and offers one to me. "I try not to indulge. It's a filthy habit," I tell him. "I love that word filthy. I love the way you force it out of your mouth like it's some kind of vermin you want to get rid of." "You've had vermin in your mouth?" "You're mean in that way, you know. You don't let anyone get away with pathetic analogies.

  Melina Marchetta

  Mean, Trying, Analogies

  Melina Marchetta (2003). “Saving Francesca”

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• War makes monsters of men, you once said to me Todd. Well, so does too much knowledge. Too much knowledge of your fellow man, too much knowledge of his weakness, his pathetic greed and vanity, and how laughably easy it is to control him.

  Patrick Ness

  War, Men, Vanity

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• He dunked his tea bag and watched the results critically. “I really must get a new supplier. This tea is pathetic. America just doesn’t understand tea at all.

  Rachel Caine

  America, Tea, Bags

  Rachel Caine (2007). “The Dead Girls' Dance: The Morganville Vampires”, p.123, Penguin

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• Our words had to be circumspect. We could not write anything too negative about our circumstances. This was tricky, since the very form of a married woman's letter needed to include the usual complaints -- that we were pathetic, powerless, worked to the bone, homesick, and sad. We were supposed to speak directly about our feelings without appearing ungrateful, no-account, or unfilial.

  Lisa See

  Writing, Ungrateful, Feelings

  Lisa See (2011). “Snow Flower and the Secret Fan”, p.197, A&C Black

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• Poetry is only the highest eloquence of passion, the most vivid form of expression that can be given to our conception of anything, whether pleasurable or painful, mean or dignified, delightful or distressing. It is the perfect coincidence of the image and the words with the feeling we have, and of which we cannot get rid in any other way, that gives an instant "satisfaction to the thought." This is equally the origin of wit and fancy, of comedy and tragedy, of the sublime and pathetic.

  William Hazlitt

  Mean, Passion, Writing

  William Hazlitt (1845). “Lectures on the English Poets”, p.9

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• The end of suffering does not justify the suffering, what a mess I am, I thought, what a fool, how foolish and narrow, how worthless, how pinched and pathetic, how helpless.

  Jonathan Safran Foer

  Suffering, Doe, Fool

  Jonathan Safran Foer (2013). “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: A Novel”, p.33, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• What will die with me the day I die? What pathetic or frail image will be lost to the world? The voice of Macedonio Fernandez, the image of a bay horse in a vacant lot on the corner of Sarrano and Charcas, a bar of sulfur in the drawer of a mahogany desk?

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Horse, Voice, Bars

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• How terrible would it be to just wait there pathetically alone for him never to show up?" Eudoxia's expression grew more serious. "That's what you're doing anyway, my dear.

  Ann Brashares

  Expression, Waiting, Serious

  Ann Brashares (2011). “Sisterhood Everlasting (Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants): A Novel”, p.226, Random House

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• I looked at myself in that window, oblivious to all the people around me and I stared and smiled that particular smile. You know that smile that seems to knock you and tell you how pathetic you are? That's the smile I was smiling.

  Markus Zusak

  People, Window, Particular

  Markus Zusak (2011). “Underdogs”, p.20, Scholastic Inc.

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• Trash? The only trash I see here are two little boys lost at sea and a pathetic excuse for a seaworthy vessel!

  Davy Jones

  Boys, Sea, Two

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• Yes, I sounded like a pathetic weenie. I prefer to think of it as showing my softer side.

  James Patterson

  Thinking, Sides

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• So, thanks,” Vivian said. “For what?” I looked up at her, confused. “For being stupid enough to love your crazy, murdering lunatic of a sister and being such a pathetic dork that I couldn’t help but love you, too

  Kiersten White

  Confused, Crazy, Stupid

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• We are left with nothing but death, the irreducible fact of our own mortality. Death after a long illness we can accept with resignation. Even accidental death we can ascribe to fate. But for a man to die of no apparent cause, for a man to die simply because he is a man, brings us so close to the invisible boundary between life and death that we no longer know which side we are on. Life becomes death, and it is as if this death has owned this life all along. Death without warning. Which is to say: life stops. And it can stop at any moment.

  Paul Auster

  Fate, Men, Long

  Paul Auster (2012). “Winter Journal”, p.182, Macmillan

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• I had the fleeting thought then that we are each of us pathetic in one way or another, and the trick is to marry a person whose patheticness you can tolerate.

  Curtis Sittenfeld

  Fleeting, Way, Tricks

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• As pathetic as it was, she'd rather hold on to the possibility of something perfect than be hit with the reality of nothing much.

  Francine Pascal

  Reality, Perfect, Possibility

  Francine Pascal (2013). “Fearless 2: Twisted; Kiss; Payback”, p.418, Simon and Schuster

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• And I ask myself what it is about me that makes this wonderful, beautiful woman return. Is it because I'm pathetic, helpless in my current state, completely dependent on her? Or is it my sense of humour, my willingness to tease her, to joke my way into painful, secret places? Do I help her understand herself? Do I make her happy? Do I do something for her that her husband and son can't do? Has she fallen in love with me? As the days pass and I continue to heal, my body knitting itself back together, I begin to allow myself to think that she has.

  Mohsin Hamid

  Beautiful, Husband, Son

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• Hello, cell. How are you? Still dank and dirty? Me? I've taken up a new habit: talking to my cell. It's like talking to myself but slightly more pathetic.

  Brandon Mull

  Dirty, Taken, Cells

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• Tranq'd by your own gun,"Lev says."How pathetic.

  Neal Shusterman

  Gun

  Neal Shusterman (2012). “Unwholly”, p.355, Simon and Schuster

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• Glaring at the Gasman, ter Borcht said, “Your time is coming to an end, you pathetic failure of an experiment. Vhat you say now is how you vill be remembered.” Gazzy’s blue eyes flashed. “Then you can remember me telling you to kiss my-” “Enough!” ter Borcht said.

  James Patterson

  Eye, Kissing, Blue

  James Patterson (2010). “Maximum Ride Boxed Set #1”, p.615, Hachette UK

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• Andrew hated to see her humiliated and pathetic like this; but he half hated her too for landing herself in it, when any idiot could have seen.

  J. K. Rowling

  Half, Idiot, Andrew

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• Stop it. Seriously. This isn't funny.' 'You're right.' A pause. 'It's pathetic.

  Sarah Dessen

  Pauses

  Sarah Dessen (2011). “What Happened to Goodbye”, p.118, Penguin

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• Life is not a series of pathetic, meaningles actions. Some of them are so far from pathetic, so far from meaningless as to be beyond reason, maybe beyond forgiveness.

  Judith Guest

  Action, Life Is, Reason

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• When it’s quiet in my head like this, that’s when the voice doesn’t need to tell me how pathetic I am. I know it in the deepest part of me. When it’s quiet like this, that’s when I truly hate myself.

  Portia de Rossi

  Hate, Voice, Needs

  Portia de Rossi (2011). “Unbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and Gain”, p.8, Simon and Schuster

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