Pity Quotes - Page 10

• Self-pity is an ignoble emotion, but we all feel it, and the orthodox critical line that it represents some kind of artistic flaw is dubious, a form of emotional correctness.

  Nick Hornby

  Emotional, Self, Dubious

  Nick Hornby (2003). “Songbook”, p.49, Penguin

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• Gentle Jesus, meek and mild, Look upon a little child; Pity my simplicity, Suffer me to come to thee.

  Charles Wesley

  Jesus, Children, Simplicity

  'Gentle Jesus, Meek and Mild'

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• Their [the Jews] rotten and unbending stiffneckedness deserves that they be oppressed unendingly and without measure or end and that they die in their misery without the pity of anyone.

  John Calvin

  Rotten, Misery, Ends

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• Baby, in a world without pity Do you think what I'm askin's too much I just want to feel you in my arms Share a little of that Human Touch.

  Bruce Springsteen

  Baby, Thinking, World

  Song: Human Touch

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• Our lives are awkward and fragile and we have only one thing to keep us sane: pity, and the man without pity is mad.

  Edward Bond

  Men, Mad, Awkward

  Edward Bond (2013). “Lear”, p.84, A&C Black

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• I was never great, but I was a good [basketball] player, and I could play seriously. Now I'm like one of these old guys who's running around, and the guys I play with, who are all a lot younger, they sort of pity me and sympathize with me. They tolerate me, but we all know that I'm the weak link on the court. And I don't like being the weak link.

  Barack Obama

  Running, Player, Guy

  "A Tribute to Barack Obama's Once Great Basketball Skills" by Jack Moore, www.gq.com. August 4, 2015.

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• The wheel of a man's life. No mercy. No pity.

  Robert Jordan

  Men, Wheels, Mercy

  "Lord of Chaos". Book by Robert Jordan, 1994.

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• Religion is an edifice built upon the dream of a beautiful world... Pity the dreamers are rarely builders.

  Avtarjeet Singh Dhanjal

  Beautiful, Dream, Religion

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• The original sin of Republicans is greed. Everyone understands greed. Everybody wants to get theirs. The original sin of Democrats is pity. Greed is more attractive, and a better motivator, than pity.

  John Scalzi

  Greed, Want, Republican

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• Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, which is a pity because this week the National Association of Beholders wrote to tell me that I've got a face like a rucksack full of dented bells.

  Charlie Brooker

  Eye, Bells, Association

  "Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe", Season 4, Episode 1, September 25, 2007.

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• Pity and forbearance should characterize all acts of justice.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Justice, Forbearance, Should

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• I do not compare the past with the present without a prejudice for either, but, great as the improvement in country life is in many respects, it seems a pity the old cheap, wholesome dishes have gone to make way for tinned and preserved foods.

  Flora Thompson

  Country, Past, Prejudice

  "The Peverel Papers: A Yearbook of the Countryside". Book by Flora Thompson. August Chapter, 1986.

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• The Pope, if nothing else, should be a Catholic. If he were to announce that women would make great priests, except it's a pity that more of them aren't gay, because of the greater compassion they could bring to the task, it might endear him to liberal Catholic commentators , but it would make him something other than a Catholic, in the true sense.

  Declan Lynch

  Gay, Compassion, Catholic

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• During a photo-call with fellow Olympic gold medallist Duncan Goodhew- Pity Steve Ovett didn't show up. Then we could have had the good, the bald and the ugly.

  Daley Thompson

  Inspirational, Funny, Gold

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• A man is seldom more manly than when he is what you call unmanned,--the source of his emotion is championship, pity, and courage; the instinctive desire to cherish those who are innocent and unhappy, and defend those who are tender and weak.

  William Makepeace Thackeray

  Men, Tears, Unhappy

  William Makepeace Thackeray (1869). “Miscellanies: The four Georges. The English humorists. Roundabout papers”, p.130

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• I'm not particularly keen on pity. Pity takes something away from grief. People think they're sharing it, but really they're just taking some. I prefer to keep my grief intact.

  Elizabeth Jane Howard

  Grief, Thinking, People

  Elizabeth Jane Howard (2012). “Getting It Right”, p.240, Pan Macmillan

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• Don't let us rejoice in punishment, even when the hand of God alone inflicts it. The best of us are but poor wretches, just saved from shipwreck. Can we feel anything but awe and pity when we see a fellow-passenger swallowed by the waves?

  George Eliot

  Punishment, Hands, Wave

  George Eliot (1869). “Silas Marner and Scenes of Clerical Life”, p.311

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• If there be a pleasure on earth which angels cannot enjoy, and which they might almost envy man the possession of, it is the power of relieving distress--if there be a pain which devils might pity man for enduring, it is the death-bed reflection that we have possessed the power of doing good, but that we have abused and perverted it to purposes of ill.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Pain, Angel, Reflection

  Charles Caleb COLTON (1849). “L.P.”, p.205

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• Self-pity shortens your life.

  Joan Rivers

  Self, Self Pity

  Joan Rivers (1997). “Bouncing back: I've survived everything-- and I mean everything-- and you can too!”, Thorndike Pr

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• The Great slight the men of wit, who have nothing but wit; the men of wit despise the Great, who have nothing but greatness; the good man pities them both, if with greatness or wit they have not virtue.

  Jean de la Bruyere

  Greatness, Men, Good Man

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• Bankers are lynxes. To expect any gratitude from them is equivalent to attempting to move the wolves of the Ukraine to pity in the middle of winter.

  Honore de Balzac

  Gratitude, Moving, Winter

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• No society is complete without some victim, a creature to pity, to jeer at, to scorn or to protect.

  Honore de Balzac

  Society, Victim, Protect

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• How far does one combine resistance to over-control with social justice, i.e. tolerable living for people in general? We are too selfish to be trusted, if left free, to give away enough to make people comfortable enough to give them a chance. Yet if all this is ordered for us, as to some extent it has to be, it so soon leads to tyranny. It is a very difficult problem. If only human beings had more pity, unselfishness, and justice and didn't need coercion to treat each other decently.

  Rose Macaulay

  Selfish, Compassion, Giving

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• The itch is a mean, unconfessable, ridiculous malady; one can pity someone who is suffering ; someone who wants to scratch himself makes one laugh.

  Andre Gide

  Mean, Laughing, Suffering

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• In prosperous fortunes be modest and wise, The greatest may fall, and the lowest may rise: But insolent People that fall in disgrace, Are wretched and nobody pities their Case.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Wise, Fall, People

  Benjamin Franklin (2005). “A Benjamin Franklin reader: the essential writings of a colonial sage ; Autobiography, Wit & wisdom”

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