Pity Quotes - Page 23

• She was moved by a kind of commiseration... a pity for that colorless existence which never uplifted its possessor beyond the region of blind contentment, in which no moment of anguish ever visited her soul, in which she would never have the taste of life's delirium.

  Kate Chopin

  Delirium Tremens, Soul, Contentment

  Kate Chopin (2016). “THE AWAKENING - A Solitary Soul (Feminist Classics Series): One Women's Story from the Turn-Of-The-Century American South”, p.72, e-artnow

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• My own idea, for what it is worth, is that all sadness which is not either arising from the repentance of a concrete sin and hastening towards concrete amendment or restitution, or else arising from pity and hastening to active assistance, is simply bad; and I think we all sin by needlessly disobeying the apostolic injunction to 'rejoice' as much as by anything else. Humility, after the first shock, is a cheerful virtue.

  C. S. Lewis

  Sadness, Humility, Thinking

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• And alien tears will fill for him pity's long broken urn. For his mourners will all be outcast men, and outcasts always mourn.

  Oscar Wilde

  Tombstone, Men, Long

  Oscar Wilde, Isobel Murray (1999). “The Soul of Man, and Prison Writings”, p.185, Oxford University Press, USA

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• Misfortune, and recited misfortune especially, can be prolonged to the point where it ceases to excite pity and arouses only irritation.

  Dorothy Parker

  Women, Irritation, Cease

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• I thought about all the people I knew who spent many of their waking hours feeling sorry for themselves. How useful it would be to put a daily limit on self-pity. Just a few tearful minutes, then on with the day.

  Mitch Albom

  Sorry, Self, People

  Mitch Albom (2007). “Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life's Greatest Lesson”, p.57, Broadway Books

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• I don’t think I pity her. She doesn’t strike me as a girl that suggests compassion. I think I envy her... I don’t know whether she is a gifted being, but she is a clever girl, with a strong will and a high temper. She has no idea of being bored...Very pretty indeed; but I don’t insist upon that. It’s her general air of being someone in particular that strikes me.

  Henry James

  Girl, Strong, Clever

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• It is one of the best traits of good people that they love where they pity. And this is truer of women than of men.

  Marilynne Robinson

  Men, People, Traits

  Marilynne Robinson (2004). “Gilead: A Novel”, p.186, Macmillan

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• I didn't know what hate felt like, not the hate that comes after love. It's huge and desperate and it longs to be proved wrong. And every day it's proved right it grows a little more monstrous. If the love was passion, the hate will be obsession. A need to see the once-loved weak and cowed beneath pity. Disgust is close and dignity is far away. The hate is not only for the once loved, it's for yourself too; how could you ever have loved this?

  Jeanette Winterson

  Hate, Passion, Needs

  "The Passion". Book by Jeanette Winterson, 1987.

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• The person who deserves most pity is a lonesome one on a rainy day who doesn't know how to read.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Reading, Rainy Day, Lonesome

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• Thine eyes I love, and they, as pitying me, Knowing thy heart torment me with disdain, Have put on black and loving mourners be, Looking with pretty ruth upon my pain. And truly not the morning sun of heaven Better becomes the grey cheeks of the east, Nor that full star that ushers in the even, Doth half that glory to the sober west, As those two mourning eyes become thy face: O! let it then as well beseem thy heart To mourn for me since mourning doth thee grace, And suit thy pity like in every part. Then will I swear beauty herself is black, And all they foul that thy complexion lack

  William Shakespeare

  Morning, Stars, Pain

  William Shakespeare (2014). “Arden Shakespeare Complete Works”, p.40, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• Expect nothing, live frugally on surprise. Become a stranger to need of pity. Or if compassion be freely given out, take only enough. Stop short of the urge to plead, then purge away the need. Wish for nothing larger than your own small heart or greater than a star. Tame wild disappointment with caress, unmoved and cold. Make of it a parka for your soul. Discover the reason why so tiny human midget exists at all, so scared and so unwise. But expect nothing, live frugally on surprise.

  Alice Walker

  Stars, Disappointment, Heart

  "Anything We Love Can Be Saved". Book by Alice Walker, June, 1997.

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• To me [Edgar Allen Poe's] prose is unreadable—like Jane Austin's [sic]. No there is a difference. I could read his prose on salary, but not Jane's. Jane is entirely impossible. It seems a great pity that they allowed her to die a natural death.

  Mark Twain

  Differences, Austin, Salary

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• Except for the sound of the rain, on the road, on the roofs, on the umbrella, there was absolute silence: only the dying moan of the sirens continued for a moment or two to vibrate within the ear. It seemed to Scobie later that this was the ultimate border he had reached in happiness: being in darkness, alone, with the rain falling, without love or pity.

  Graham Greene

  Rain, Fall, Two

  Graham Greene (1971). “The heart of the matter”, Vintage

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• Unless a man has pity he is not truly a man. If a man has not wept at the worlds pain he is only half a man, and there will always be pain in the world, knowing this does not mean that a man shall dispair. A good man will seek to take pain out of things. A foolish man will not even notice it, except in himself, and the poor unfortunate evil man will drive pain deeper into things and spread it about wherever he goes.

  William Saroyan

  Pain, Mean, Men

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• Literary fiction and poetry are real marginalized right now. There's a fallacy that some of my friends sometimes fall into, the ol' "The audience is stupid. The audience only wants to go this deep. Poor us, we're marginalized because of TV, the great hypnotic blah, blah." You can sit around and have these pity parties for yourself. Of course this is bullshit. If an art form is marginalized it's because it's not speaking to people. One possible reason is that the people it's speaking to have become too stupid to appreciate it. That seems a little easy to me.

  David Foster Wallace

  Art, Stupid, Real

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• The world was a terrible place, cruel, pitiless, dark as a bad dream. Not a good place to live. Only in books could you find pity, comfort, happiness - and love. Books loved anyone who opened them, they gave you security and friendship and didn't ask anything in return; they never went away, never, not even when you treated them badly.

  Cornelia Funke

  Dream, Reading, Book

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• I was young I was so young it hurt like a knife inside because there was no alternative except to hide as long as possible--- not in self-pity but with dismay at my limited chance: trying to connect.

  Charles Bukowski

  Hurt, Self, Knives

  Charles Bukowski, “Friends Within The Darkness”

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• A good laugh is a mighty good thing, and rather too scarce a good thing; the more's the pity. So, if any one man, in his own proper person, afford stuff for a good joke to anybody, let him not be backward, but let him cheerfully allow himself to spend and be spent in that way. And the man that has anything bountifully laughable about him, be sure there is more in that man than you perhaps think for.

  Herman Melville

  Men, Thinking, Laughing

  Herman Melville (2015). “Annotated Moby Dick or, the Whale with English Grammar Exercises: by Herman Melville (Author), Robert Powell (Editor)”, p.40, Powell Publications, LLC

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• A benevolent malefactor, merciful, gentle, helpful, clement, a convict, returning good for evil, giving back pardon for hatred, preferring pity to vengeance, preferring to ruin himself rather than to ruin his enemy, saving him who had smitten him, kneeling on the heights of virtue, more nearly akin to an angel than to a man. Javert was constrained to admit to himself that this monster existed. Things could not go on in this manner.

  Victor Hugo

  Angel, Men, Evil

  Victor Hugo (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Victor Hugo (Illustrated)”, p.3429, Delphi Classics

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• Pity the planet, all joy gone from this sweet volcanic cone; peace to our children when they fall in small war on the heel of small war--until the end of time to police the earth, a ghost orbiting forever lost in our monotonous sublime

  Robert Lowell

  Sweet, Children, War

  Robert Lowell, Jeffrey Meyers (1988). “Robert Lowell, Interviews and Memoirs”, p.188, University of Michigan Press

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• Pity can purge us of hostility and arouse feelings of identification with the characters, but it can also be a consoling reassurance which leads us to believe that we have understood, and that, in pitying, we have even done something to right a wrong.

  Richard Wright

  Believe, Character, Feelings

  Richard Wright (1957). “Native Son”, p.393, McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP

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• A fight is going on inside me," said an old man to his son. "It is a terrible fight between two wolves. One wolf is evil. He is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego. The other wolf is good. he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you." The son thought about it for a minute and then asked, "Which wolf will win?" The old man replied simply, "The one you feed.

  Wendy Mass

  Kindness, Regret, Lying

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• A miracle. Here's our own hands against our hearts. Come, I will have thee, but by this light I take thee for pity. Beatrice: I would not deny you, but by this good day, I yield upon great persuasion, and partly to save your life, for I was told you were in a consumption. Benedick: Peace. I will stop your mouth.

  William Shakespeare

  Heart, Good Day, Hands

  William Shakespeare (2013). “Much Ado About Nothing Simplified!: Includes Study Guide, Biography, and Modern Retelling”, p.278, BookCaps Study Guides

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• If you looked down to the bottom of my soul, you would understand fully the source of my longing and – pity me. Even the open, transparent lake has its unknown depths, which no divers know.

  Hans Christian Andersen

  Lakes, Soul, Depth

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• It is not only species of animal that die out, but whole species of feeling. And if you are wise you will never pity the past for what it did not know, but pity yourself for what it did.

  John Fowles

  Wise, Past, Animal

  1965 The Magus, ch.24.

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