Pity Quotes - Page 16

• self-pity is better than none.

  Phyllis Diller

  Self, Self Pity

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• There is nothing sadder in this world than to awake Christmas morning and not be a child. ... Time, self-pity, apathy, bitterness, and exhaustion can take the Christmas out of the child, but you cannot take the child out of Christmas.

  Erma Bombeck

  Christmas, Morning, Children

  Erma Bombeck (2011). “I Lost Everything in the Post-Natal Depression”, p.119, Fawcett

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• But a rascal of a child (that age is without pity).
  [Fr., Mais un pripon d'enfant (cet age est sans pitie).

  Jean de La Fontaine

  Children, Childhood, Age

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• When I gaze into the stars, they look down upon me with pity from their serene and silent spaces, like eyes glistening with tears over the little lot of man. Thousands of generations, all as noisy as our own, have been swallowed up by time, and there remains no record of them any more. Yet Arcturus and Orion, Sirius and Pleiades, are still shining in their courses, clear and young, as when the shepherd first noted them in the plain of Shinar!

  Thomas Carlyle

  Stars, Eye, Men

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• The drama is not a mere copy of nature, not a facsimile. It is the free running hand of genius, under the impression of its liveliest wit or most passionate impulses, a thousand times adorning or feeling all as it goes; and you must read it, as the healthy instinct of audiences almost always does, if the critics will let them alone, with a grain of allowance, and a tendency to go away with as much of it for use as is necessary, and the rest for the luxury of laughter, pity, or poetical admiration.

  Leigh Hunt

  Running, Laughter, Drama

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• They love the country, and none else, who seek
  For their own sake its silence and its shade.
  Delights which who would leave, that has a heart
  Susceptible of pity, or a mind
  Cultured and capable of sober thought.

  William Cowper

  Country, Heart, Silence

  William Cowper, James Thomson (1832). “The Works of Cowper and Thompson: Including Many Letters and Poems Never Before Published in this Country. With a New and Interesting Memoir of the Life of Thomson”, p.73

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• If I freely may discover
  What should please me in my lover,
  I would have her fair and witty,
  Savouring more of court than city;
  A little proud, but full of pity;
  Light and humorous in her toying,
  Oft building hopes, and soon destroying,
  Long, but sweet in the enjoying;
  Neither too easy nor to hard;
  All extremes I would have barr'd.

  Ben Jonson

  Love, Sweet, Witty

  Ben Jonson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ben Jonson (Illustrated)”, p.690, Delphi Classics

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• Forbear, you things
  That stand upon the pinnacles of state,
  To boast your slippery height! when you do fall,
  You dash yourselves in pieces, ne'er to rise:
  And he that lends you pity, is not wise.

  Ben Jonson

  Wise, Fall, Pieces

  Ben Jonson (1990). “Sejanus His Fall”, p.261, Manchester University Press

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• Sacrificers ... are not the ones to pity. The ones to pity are those that they sacrifice. Oh, the sacrificers, they get it both ways. A person knows themselves that they're able to do without.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Sacrifice, Able, Way

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• Above all things I entreat you to preserve your faith in Christ. It is my wealth in poverty, my joy in sorrow, my peace amid tumult. For all the evil I have committed, my gracious pardon; and for every effort, my exceeding great reward. I have found it to be so. I can smile with pity at the infidel whose vanity makes him dream that I should barter such a blessing for the few subtleties from the school of the cold-blooded sophists.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Dream, School, Blessing

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• Heart-chilling superstition! thou canst glaze even Pity's eye with her own frozen tear.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Heart, Eye, Tears

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley (1829). “The Poetical Works of Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats. Complete in One Volume”, p.89

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• O blessed bounty, giving ail content!
  The only fautress of all noble arts
  That lend'st success to every good intent.
  A grace that rests in the most godlike hearts,
  By heav'n to none but happy souls infus'd
  Pity it is, that e'er thou wast abus'd.

  Michael Drayton

  Art, Blessed, Giving

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• We pity or condemn the communist peoples of the world for being bound in the chains of doctrine. So are we. Our doctrine runs as follows: Our Way is the Only Way.

  Marya Mannes

  Running, Doctrine, World

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• Pity is a corroding thing.

  Martha Graham

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• We pity people too often for the wrong reasons.

  Katherine Anne Porter

  People, Reason, Wrong Reasons

  Katherine Anne Porter (2008). “Katherine Anne Porter: Collected Stories & Other Writings”, p.591, Library of America

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• As there were no black Founding Fathers, there were no founding mothers - a great pity, on both counts.

  Shirley Chisholm

  Mother, Father, Black

  Shirley Chisholm's remarks for the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), August 10, 1970.

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• I think I love most people best when they are in adversity; for pity is one of my prevailing passions.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Passion, Adversity, Thinking

  Mary Wollstonecraft, Janet M. Todd (2003). “The collected letters of Mary Wollstonecraft”

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• People sinking into self-pity and depression are dreary, but they can't get out of it by themselves. So every now and then, just sit there and listen, and listen, and listen. You're paying your membership dues in the human race.

  Barbara Walters

  Compassion, Race, Self

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• What a pity when editors review a woman's book, that they so often fall into the error of reviewing the woman instead.

  Fanny Fern

  Book, Fall, Errors

  Fanny Fern (2015). “Ginger-Snaps”, p.70, Sheba Blake Publishing

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• Laughter is the great antidote for self-pity, maybe a specific for the malady, yet probably it does tend to dry one's feelings out a little, as if by exposing them to a vigorous wind.

  Mary McCarthy

  Laughter, Self, Wind

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• Assuredly it would be a pity if laughter should ever become, like rhetoric and the arts, a habit.

  Alice Meynell

  Art, Laughter, Would Be

  Alice Meynell (1925). “Essays”

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• An ounce of help is worth more than a pound of pity any day.

  Louise Jordan Miln

  Pounds, Helping

  Louise Jordan Miln (2007). “The Green Goddess”, p.33, Library of Alexandria

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• It is a pity that, commonly, more care is had--yea, and that among very wise men--to find out rather a cunning man for their horse than a cunning man for their children.

  Roger Ascham

  Wise, Horse, Children

  Roger Ascham (1815). “The English Works of Roger Ascham: Preceptor to Queen Elizabeth”, p.206

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• O, if there be any kind of life most sad, and deepest in the scale of pity, it is the dry, cold impotence of one, who has honestly set to the work of his own self-redemption.

  Horace Bushnell

  Self, Redemption, Dry

  Horace Bushnell (1858). “Nature and the Supernatural: As Together Constituting the One System of God”, p.237

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• pity and charity may be at root an attempt to propitiate the dark powers that have not touched us yet.

  Marilynne Robinson

  Dark, Roots, Charity

  Marilynne Robinson (2004). “Housekeeping: A Novel”, p.178, Macmillan

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