Pity Quotes - Page 17

• Are we not to pity and supply the poor, though they have no relation to us? No relation? That cannot be. The Gospel styles them all our brethren.

  Thomas Sprat

  Style, Poor, Alms

  Thomas Sprat (1678). “A Sermon Preached at the Anniversary Meeting of the Sons of Clergy-men: In the Church of St. Mary-le-Bow, Nov. Vii, 1678”, p.11

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• There are some women in whom conscience is so strongly developed that it leaves little room for anything else. Love is scarcely felt before duty rushes to encase it, anger impossible because one must always be calm and see both sides, pity evaporates in expedients, even grief is felt as a sort of bruised sense of injury, a resentment that one should have grief forced upon one when one has always acted for the best.

  Sylvia Townsend Warner

  Grief, Love Is, Should Have

  Sylvia Townsend Warner (2011). “Selected Stories”, p.246, Hachette UK

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• In general, indulgence for those we know is rarer than pity for those we know not.

  Antoine Rivarol

  Clemency, Indulgence, Knows

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• But human nature cannot be content on a diet of honey and if there is nothing in one's life that requires pity, one must invent it; for to go through life unpitied would be an unthinkable loss.

  Angela Thirkell

  Loss, Would Be, Honey

  Angela Thirkell (1968). “The Brandons, and others”, Hamish Hamilton

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• For the world is founded and built up on death, and the reality of death is neither to be questioned nor feared. Death is a dark dream, but it is not a nightmare. It is mankind's lack of pity, mankind's fatal propensity for torture, that is the nightmare.

  Mary Webb

  Death, Dream, Dark

  Mary Webb (2016). “Gone To Earth”, p.194, Mary Webb

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• The pity of living only once is that there is no way, ever, to be sure which sorrows are inevitable.

  Rosellen Brown

  Sorrow, Way, Inevitable

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• These are the lords
  That have bought titles: men may merchandise
  Wares, ay and traffic in all commodities
  From sea to sea, and from shore to shore:
  But in my thought, of all things that are sold,
  'Tis pity honor should be bought for gold:
  It cuts off all desert.

  Eliza Haywood

  Cutting, Men, Sea

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• It's a pity we're still officially living in an age called the Holocene. The Anthropocene - human dominance of biological, chemical and geological processes on Earth - is already an undeniable reality.

  Paul J. Crutzen

  Reality, Age, Dominance

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• It always seems to me that one of the saddest things about the death of a literary man is the fact that the breaking-up of his collection of books almost invariably follows; the building up of a good library, the work of a lifetime, has been so much labour lost, so far as future generations are concerned. Talent, yes, and genius too, are displayed not only in writing books but also in buying them, and it is a pity that the ruthless hammer of the auctioneer should render so much energy and skill fruitless.

  Stuart Dodgson Collingwood

  Book, Writing, Men

  Stuart Dodgson Collingwood (1898). “The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll (Rev. C.L. Dodgson)”

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• You lose such a lot of time just sleeping ... when you might just be living! ... It seems such a pity we can't live nights too.

  Eleanor Porter

  Sleep, Night, Might

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• For the last six or seven years the circus has no longer been in fashion. That is a pity. One should go to the circus, beyond any question of fashion, at least one or two times a year-I am not speaking here to the real enthusiasts, they know better than I what they have to do.

  Adrienne Monnier

  Fashion, Real, Years

  Adrienne Monnier (1976). “The Very Rich Hours of Adrienne Monnier”, p.237, U of Nebraska Press

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• Pity is something only weakness wants.

  Mabel Seeley

  Weakness, Want

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• When the red wrath perisheth, when the dulled swords fail, These three who have walked with Death these shall prevail. Hell bade all its millions rise; Paradise sends three: Pity, and Self-sacrifice, and Charity.

  Theodosia Garrison

  War, Sacrifice, Wrath

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• If pity was always equally alive and acting in all individuals and in all circumstances, we could do away with moral. Unfortunately, it is not compassion, but rather it's contrary, selfishness, that act most strongly in us.

  African Spir

  Compassion, Acting, Selfishness

  "Paroles d'un sage: Choix de pensées d'African Spir" ("Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir") by Hélène Claparède-Spir, (p. 57), 1937.

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• The tale of the Divine Pity was never yet believed from lips that were not felt to be moved by human pity.

  George Eliot

  Lips, Divine, Tales

  George Eliot (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated)”, p.3792, Delphi Classics

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• Milk-livered man,
  That bear'st a cheek for blows, a head for wrongs;
  Who hast not in thy brows an eye discerning
  Thine honor from thy suffering; [that not know'st
  Fools do those villains pity who are punished
  Ere they have done their mischief. Where's thy drum?
  France spreads his banners in our noiseless land,
  With plumed helm thy state begins to threat,
  Whilst thou, a moral fool, sits still and cries
  'Alack, why does he so?']

  William Shakespeare

  Eye, Blow, Men

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• It is a pity that Elizabeth and I cannot marry each other. Our children would have gained mastery over the whole world.

  Pope Sixtus V

  Children, Mastery, World

  "Woman Through the Ages: Volume 2". Book by Emil Reich, p. 38, 1908.

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• Of all the well-meant emotions pity is the cruelest to share.

  Joan Slonczewski

  Emotion, Share, Wells

  "A Door into Ocean". Book by Joan Slonczewski, 1986.

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• nothing is so binding as pity.

  Alice Tisdale Hobart

  Binding

  Alice Tisdale Hobart (1946). “The Peacock Sheds His Tail”

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• I do pity unlearned gentlemen on a rainy day.

  Lucius Cary, 2nd Viscount Falkland

  Rainy Day, Gentleman, Ennui

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• It is a pity we do not die when our lives are finished.

  Mary Borden

  Death, Dies, Our Lives

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• ... real pity should stretch out to people whom we do not like -- to those whom we have injured or who despitefully use us.

  Margaret Campbell Barnes

  Real, People, Use

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• Brilliant. A very funny and concise explanation of why we men are as we are. If you are male, you should read it and then make your partner read it, so they will no longer hate you but pity you instead.

  Harry Enfield

  Hate, Men, Males

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• Even if you have the wit to look by yourself in a bush away from the other children, there are not many bell crickets in the world. Probably you will find a girl like a grasshopper whom you think is a bell cricket.And finally, to your clouded, wounded heart, even a true bell cricket will seem like a grasshopper. Should that day come, when it seems to you that the world is only full of grasshoppers, I will think it a pity that you have no way to remember tonight's play of light, when your name was written in green by your beautiful lantern on a girl's breast.

  Yasunari Kawabata

  Beautiful, Girl, Children

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• Mediocrity is the most effective mask a superior spirit can wear, because to the great majority, which is to say, to the mediocre,it will not suggest a disguise:--and yet it is precisely for their sake that he puts it on--so as not to arouse them, and, indeed, not infrequently to avoid this out of pity and benevolence.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Majority, Mediocrity, Sake

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