Pitiful Quotes

• It is always pitiful when any human being falls into a condition hardly more respectable than that of an animal. How much more pitiful it is when the person who falls has had all the advantages!

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Fall, Animal, Advantage

  Kurt Vonnegut (2007). “The Sirens of Titan”, p.49, Dial Press

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• There is nothing so pitiful as a young cynic because he has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing.

  Maya Angelou

  Life Lesson, Believe, Knowing Nothing

  "The Truth in Words". Book by Neal Zero, 2005.

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• Pitiful is the person who is afraid of taking risks.

  Paulo Coelho

  Risk, Disillusionment, Disillusioned

  Paulo Coelho (2009). “By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept: A Novel of Forgiveness”, p.7, Harper Collins

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• God has given you a spirit with wings on which to soar into the spacious firmament of Love and Freedom. Is it not pitiful than that you cut your wings with your own hands and suffer your soul to crawl like an insect upon the earth?

  Khalil Gibran

  Love, Cutting, Hands

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• You can be pitiful, or you can be powerful, but you can't be both

  Joyce Meyer

  Powerful, Opposites, Ministers

  Twitter post from Dec 11, 2013

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• But I think I have done right to save the vision in this way, even though I may die sooner because I did it; for I know the meaning of the vision is wise and beautiful and good; and you can see that I am only a pitiful old man after all.

  Black Elk

  Beautiful, Wise, Thinking

  Black Elk, John G. Neihardt (2014). “Black Elk Speaks: The Complete Edition”, p.128, U of Nebraska Press

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• The most pitiful among men is he who turns his dreams into silver and gold.

  Khalil Gibran

  Dream, Men, Gold

  Khalil Gibran “The New Frontier and Sand and Foam”, Library of Alexandria

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• Pessimists are usually kind. The gay, bubbling over, have no time for the pitiful.

  Sean O Faolain

  Optimistic, Gay, Kind

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• I think that they participated in something that was not very proper and was very pitiful, not only for the Algerian people, but also for the other people who counted on our support.

  Ahmed Ben Bella

  Thinking, People, Support

  "For Ahmed Ben Bella, the liberation of the people in the South is still unachieved". Interview with Silvia Cattori, www.voltairenet.org. May 9, 2006.

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• The playwright's rendition of Abraham Lincoln remembers a pitiful little paddlewheel he saw that he could only generate steam to EITHER blow the ship's whistle OR move the wheel. Just as the little ship could not do both, Lincoln fears that very few can actually think and speak at the same time.

  Norman Corwin

  Moving, Thinking, Blow

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• A face painted in a picture gives a pitiful parody of life. . . but a painted surface lives.

  Kazimir Malevich

  Giving, Faces, Parody

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• Come, seeling night, Scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day, And with thy bloody and invisible hand Cancel and tear to pieces that great bond Which keeps me pale. Light thickens, and the crow Makes wing to th' rooky wood. Good things of day begin to droop and drowse, While night's black agents to their prey do rouse.

  William Shakespeare

  Eye, Night, Hands

  'Macbeth' (1606) act 3, sc. 2, l. 45

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• He is like to be mistaken who makes choice of a covetous man for a friend, or relieth upon the reed of narrow and poltroon friendship. Pitiful things are only to be found in the cottages of such breasts; but bright thoughts, clear deeds, constancy, fidelity, bounty and generous honesty are the gems of noble minds, wherein (to derogate from none) the true, heroic English gentleman hath no peer.

  Thomas Browne

  Honesty, Men, Choices

  Sir Thomas Browne (1835). “Sir Thomas Browne's Works: Repertorium. A letter to a friend. Christian morals. Certain miscellany tracts. Unpublished papers”, p.79

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• We are all jellyfish, too pitiful and too afraid of being disliked to be honest.

  May Sarton

  Honesty, Being Honest, Jellyfish

  May Sarton (2014). “The House by the Sea: A Journal”, p.136, Open Road Media

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• You know, I believe that marriage is between a man and a woman.

  Carly Fiorina

  Crazy, Believe, Men

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• I believe a marriage is between a man and a woman.

  George W. Bush

  Crazy, Believe, Men

  "Fox News Sunday" with Brit Hume, www.foxnews.com. August 3, 2003.

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• These flowers, which were splendid and sprightly, waking in the dawn of the morning, in the evening will be a pitiful frivolity, sleeping in the cold night's arms.

  Pedro Calderon de la Barca

  Heartbreak, Morning, Flower

  "A las flores". Poem by Pedro Calderon de la Barca,

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• The cow is an exceptionally loving and gentle creature. She cries for days when her calf is taken from her. It is a pitiful sound, a pitiful sound.

  Helen Weston

  Taken, Animal, Sound

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• The truth now.He was disappointed in human beings.He had seen too many betrayals,too many pitiful weaknesses,too much greed for money and fame.The falseness between lovers,husbands and wifes,fathers,sons,mothers,daughters

  Mario Puzo

  Daughter, Mother, Husband

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• Proper prior planning prevents pitiful poor performance.

  Don Meyer

  Basketball, Planning, Poor

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• The most pitiful human ailment is a birdseed heart.

  Wilson Mizner

  Heart, Greed, Humans

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• "Dirty Love" wasn't written and directed, it was committed. Here is a film so pitiful, it doesn't rise to the level of badness. It is hopelessly incompetent... I am not certain that anyone involved has ever seen a movie, or knows what one is.

  Roger Ebert

  Dirty, Levels, Film

  Roger Ebert's review of "Dirty Love", www.rogerebert.com. September 22, 2005.

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• Obedience indeed is only the pitiful and cowardly egotism of him who thinks that he can do something better than reason.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Thinking, Reason, Obedience

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (1994). “The Selected Poetry and Prose of Shelley”, p.92, Wordsworth Editions

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• Leaders goal: Don't be afraid of vulnerability & transparency, (without being pitiful). People respond to authenticity.

  Brian Houston

  People, Goal, Leader

  Twitter post from Jun 09, 2015

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• Yet this perhaps is what love does, or the memory of it; it sucks the life from the living, glorying body and leaves it, when love has gone, a shred, a simulacrum - dross, to be swept up from the factory floor, pitiful and dusty, useless... Do all men and women feel love before they die? This force, this source of light, that lies before the sun; glances off mountains and lakes, blinding and dazzling, on a Sunday afternoon; so brilliant you have to guard your soul, fold your arms to shield your heart from the very memory of it.

  Fay Weldon

  Memories, Lying, Heart

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