Pity Quotes - Page 21

• Compliments make me vain: & when I am vain, I am insolent & overbearing. It is a pity, too, because I love compliments. I love them even when they are not so. My child, I can live on a good compliment two weeks with nothing else to eat.

  Mark Twain

  Children, Two, Compliment

  Samuel Langhorne Clemens, Mark Twain (2009). “Mark Twain's Aquarium: The Samuel Clemens-Angelfish Correspondence, 1905-1910”, p.16, University of Georgia Press

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• Many years ago, when I was once saying sadly to Max it was a pity I couldn't have taken up archaeology when I was a girl, so as to be more knowledgeable on the subject, he said, 'Don't you realize that at this moment you know more about prehistoric pottery than any woman in England?'

  Agatha Christie

  Girl, Taken, Years

  Agatha Christie (1991). “Agatha Christie: An Autobiography”, Berkley Publishing Group

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• Self-pity gets you nowhere. But insight to see that something can be done with the second-bests and adventurous daring to try might be a handle to take hold of.

  Harry Emerson Fosdick

  Self, Trying, Done

  Harry Emerson Fosdick (1958). “Riverside sermons”

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• I have always said that if Great Britain were defeated in war I hoped we should find a Hitler to lead us back to our rightful position among the nations. I am sorry, however, that he has not been mellowed by the great success that has attended him. The whole world would rejoice to see the Hitler of peace and tolerance, and nothing would adorn his name in world history so much as acts of magnanimity and of mercy and of pity to the forlorn and friendless, to the weak and poor.... Let this great man search his own heart and conscience before he accuses anyone of being a warmonger.

  Winston Churchill

  Sorry, War, Heart

  "Mr. Churchill's Reply". The Times, November 7, 1938.

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• I now began for the first time to envy those young cubs at the university who had fine scholars to tell them what was what; professors who had devoted their lives to mastering and focusing ideas in every branch of learning; who were eager to distribute the treasures they had gathered before they were overtaken by the night. But now I pity undergraduates, when I see what frivolous lives many of them lead in the midst of precious fleeting opportunity. After all, a man's Life must be nailed to a cross either of Thought or Action. Without work there is no play.

  Winston Churchill

  Opportunity, Night, Men

  "My Early Life: A Roving Commission". Book by Winston Churchill, 1930.

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• I was taught in the sixth grade that we had a standing army of just over a hundred thousand men and that the generals had nothing to say about what was done in Washington. I was taught to be proud of that and to pity Europe for having more than a million men under arms and spending all their money on airplanes and tanks. I simply never unlearned junior civics. I still believe in it. I got a very good grade.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Believe, Airplane, Army

  "Kurt Vonnegut". Book by James Lundquist, 1971.

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• In everything that can be called art there is a quality of redemption. It may be pure tragedy, if it is high tragedy, and it may be pity and irony, and it may be the raucous laughter of the strong man. But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid.

  Raymond Chandler

  Art, Strong, Laughter

  "The Simple Art of Murder," Atlantic Monthly, Dec. 1944

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• Instead of leading to the high places of happiness, from which the world would seem to lie below one, so that one could look down with a sense of exaltation and advantage, and judge and choose and pity, it led rather downward and earthward, into realms of restriction and depression, where the sound of other lives, easier and freer, was heard as from above, and served to deepen the feeling of failure.

  Henry James

  Lying, Judging, Feelings

  Henry James (2016). “Portrait of a Lady”, p.377, Henry James

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• Far more quickly than reason and logic, irony can penetrate rage and puncture self-pity.

  Moss Hart

  Self, Irony, Logic

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• Pity those who cannot say: Thy will be done not mine, today.

  Elaine A. Cannon

  Done, Today, Mines

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• Life is too short for long pity parties. Get busy living, or get busy dying.

  Regina Brett

  Party, Life Is Too Short, Long

  Regina Brett (2010). “Life's Little Detours: 50 Lessons to Find and Hold onto Happiness”, p.41, Hachette UK

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• When our children die, we drop them into the unknown, shuddering with fear. We know that they go out from us, and we stand, and pity, and wonder.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Children, Wonder, Knows

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers". Book by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 52, 1895.

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• Being able to play tragedy for humor rather than pity is a new trick I've learned. For a long time that's what I did with my poetry, ask people to feel sorry for me. I got sober and I realized I have to get out of the pity thing; it's not going anywhere for me. I don't want to have any self-pity.

  Bucky Sinister

  Sorry, Play, Self

  Source: therumpus.net

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• It's a pity that there's such a negative connotation about paying for sex.

  Annie Sprinkle

  Sex, Negative, Connotation

  Source: therumpus.net

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• I think the French have come to grips with their past, and that was true up until about - until the '70s. And then there were things like the film "The Sorrow And The Pity."

  Robert O. Paxton

  Past, Thinking, Sorrow

  "War Crime Investigations Among France's Release Of Vichy Documents". "All Things Considered" with Robert Siegel, www.npr.org. December 29, 2015.

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• I do not hope somebody breaks in. However, if they did, I pity them. I pity the fool that breaks into my house.

  Amber Heard

  House, Fool, Break

  "20Q: Amber Heard". Interview with Eric Spitznagel, www.playboy.com. August 10, 2011.

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• Unfortunately, in the environment, I don't see as much willingness to invest heavily in R&D as I do in consumer technology. And that's a pity.

  Ramez Naam

  Technology, Environment, Consumers

  "Q&A with Ramez Naam: Dialogues on the Environment". Interview with Mark Tercek, bigthink.com.

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• If you can once engage people's pride, love, pity, ambition (or whatever is their prevailing passion) on your side, you need not fear what their reason can do against you.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Passion, Ambition, Pride

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• I have found that the best cure for self pity is to do something to help someone else.

  Carl Orr

  Self, Musician, Helping

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• Diligence means to be keen in matters of virtue and justice, but worldly people use diligence to solve their economic difficulties. Frugality means to have little desire for material goods, but worldly people use frugality as a cover for stinginess. Thus do watchwords of enlightened life turn into tools for the private business of small people. What a pity!

  Zicheng Hong

  Mean, People, Justice

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• When your awareness is contracted, the flow of energy and information throughout your bodymind is hampered. You tend to stay stuck in toxic emotions such as regret, resentment, and self-pity. Non-nurturing habits such as overeating and not exercising take hold. The feedback loop between your mind and your body turns negative, and stress can hit you instantaneously or grind away at you day after day.

  Deepak Chopra

  Regret, Stress, Exercise

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• I think the great unspoken theme in noir fiction is male self-pity. It pervades noir movies.

  James Ellroy

  Thinking, Self, Males

  "The Onion talks to crime-fiction kingpin James Ellroy". Interview by John Krewson, www.avclub.com. November 20, 1996.

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• It's a pity if someone who has a really profoundly potent art to share chooses not to or doesn't fit into this very thin slice of what's desirable and marketable, chances are the public will never get a chance to hear what they're doing.

  Esperanza Spalding

  Art, Chance, Fit

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• If it takes a hundred years, it will be a pity, but I will not cease to work for it as long as I live.

  Marie Curie

  Perseverance, Years, Long

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• Self-pity is the most negative quality of the human spirit. Difficulties in life are intended to make us better, not bitter.

  Jon M. Huntsman Sr.

  Self, Quality, Negative

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