Pity Quotes - Page 33

• Why is it that my heart is so touched whenever I meet a dog lost in our noisy streets? Why do I feel such anguished pity when I see one of these creatures coming and going, sniffing everyone, frightened, despairing of even finding its master?

  Emile Zola

  Dog, Heart, Lost

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• When I was young I pitied the old. Now old, it is the young I pity.

  Jean Rostand

  Inspirational, Young

  Jean Rostand (1962). “The substance of man”

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• Self-pity does not appreciate pedantry.

  Alexander McCall Smith

  Self, Appreciate, Doe

  Alexander McCall Smith (2011). “Bertie Plays The Blues: 7”, p.9, Hachette UK

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• When I saw photographs of children murdered by the Fascist, I felt furious pity. When the supporters of Franco talked of Red atrocities, I merely felt indignant that people should tell such lies. In the first case I saw corpses, in the second only words. . . I gradually acquired a certain horror of the way in which my own mind worked. It was clear to me that unless I cared about every murdered child impartially, I did not really care about children being murdered at all.

  Stephen Spender

  Children, Lying, People

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• In past ages, the law governing the survival of the fittest roughly weeded out the less desirable strains. Then man's new sense of pity began to interfere with the ruthless workings of nature. As a result, we continue to keep alive and to breed the unfit.

  Nikola Tesla

  Past, Men, Law

  "A Machine to End War" by Nikola Tesla, 1937.

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• Access to communication in the widest sense is access to knowledge, and that is vitally important for us if we are not to go on being despised or patronized by condescending sighted people. We do not need pity, nor do we need to be reminded that we are vulnerable. We must be treated as equals — and communication is the way we can bring this about.

  Louis Braille

  Communication, Important, Needs

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• He does not feel pity for himself - thus he can successfully develop.

  Laozi

  Philosophy, Doe, Feels

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• Selfishness is one of the more common faces of pride. 'How everything affects me' is the center of all that matters-self-conceit, self-pity, worldly self-fulfillment, self-gratification, and self-seeking.

  Ezra Taft Benson

  Pride, Self, Matter

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• There are those without decency who must be fought without hesitation, without pity.

  Henri

  Hesitation, Decency

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• I am not concerned with Poetry. My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity. Yet these elegies are to this generation in no sense conciliatory. They may be to the next. All a poet can do today is warn. That is why the true Poets must be truthful.

  Wilfred Owen

  War, This Generation, Generations

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• To-morrow I will begin, thought Katy, as she dropped asleep that night. How often we all do so! And what a pity it is that when morning comes and to-morrow is to-day, we so frequently wake up feeling quite differently; careless or impatient, and not a bit inclined to do the fine things we planned overnight.

  Sarah Chauncey Woolsey

  Morning, Night, Feelings

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• Fear is a habit, so is self pity, defeat, anxiety, despair, hopelessness and resignation. You can eliminate all of these negative habits with two simple resolves: I can and I will.

  Napoleon Hill

  Inspirational, Fear, Simple

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• There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.

  Toni Morrison

  Writing, Self, Civilization

  "In times of dread, artists must never choose to remain silent" by Toni Morrison, www.thenation.com. March 23, 2013.

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• As a boy I used to go to the Chamber of Horrors at the annual fair, to look at the wax figures of Emperors and Kings, of heroes and murderers of the day. The dead now had that same unreality, which shocks without arousing pity.

  Ernst Toller

  Kings, Hero, Boys

  Ernst Toller (1934). “I was a German: the autobiography of Ernst Toller”

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• What I ask for the Negro is not benevolence, not pity, not sympathy, but simply justice.

  Frederick Douglass

  Justice, Benevolence, Asks

  Frederick Douglass (2016). “The Essential Douglass: Selected Writings and Speeches”, p.196, Hackett Publishing

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• If every man's internal care Were written on his brow, How many would our pity share Who raise our envy now?

  Pietro Metastasio

  Kindness, Men, Envy

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• It's time to blow out the candles on the pity party cake.

  Louie Giglio

  Party, Blow, Cake

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• Pity all newlyweds. She cooks something nice for him, and he brings her flowers, and they kiss and think: How easy marriage is.

  Mignon McLaughlin

  Marriage, Nice, Flower

  Mignon McLaughlin (2014). “Aperçus: The Aphorisms of Mignon McLaughlin”, p.24, BookBaby

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• Of one thing I am sure. Complaining is self-perpetuating and counterproductive. Whenever I express my complaints in the hope of evoking pity and receiving the satisfaction I so much desire, the result is always the opposite of what I tried to get. A complainer is hard to live with, and very few people know how to respond to the complaints made by a self-rejecting person. The tragedy is that, often, the complaint, once expressed, leads to that which is most feared: further rejection.

  Henri Nouwen

  Self, Opposites, People

  Henri J.M. Nouwen (2016). “The Return of the Prodigal Son Anniversary Edition: A Special Two-in-One Volume, including Home Tonight”, p.80, Convergent Books

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• If we lacked curiosity, we should do less for the good of our neighbor. But, under the name of duty or pity, curiosity steals into the home of the unhappy and the needy. Perhaps even in the famous mother-love there is a good deal of curiosity.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Mother, Home, Names

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• If all alms were given only from pity, all beggars would have starved long ago.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Long Ago, Alms, Given

  Friedrich Nietzsche (1977). “The Portable Nietzsche”, p.51, Penguin

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• Verily, I do not like them, the merciful who feel blessed in their pity: they are lacking too much in shame. If I must pity, at least I do not want it known; and if I do pity, it is preferably from a distance.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Distance, Blessed, Want

  Friedrich Nietzsche (1977). “The Portable Nietzsche”, p.127, Penguin

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• I paint digitally now. A pity, in some ways, as the biggest price one pays is that you no longer have a finished piece of physical art to hang on a wall. I miss that terribly.

  Berkeley Breathed

  Art, Wall, Missing

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• You may regret calamities if you can thereby help the sufferer, but if you cannot, mind your own business.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Regret, Mind Your Own Business, May

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Alfred R. Ferguson (1965). “Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume V: 1835-1838”, p.335, Harvard University Press

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• Pity wraps the student of the past in an ambrosial cloud, and washes his limbs with eternal youth.

  E. M. Forster

  Past, Clouds, Students

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