Pity Quotes - Page 27

• To a sensitive being, pity is not seldom pain.

  Herman Melville

  Pain, Sensitive

  Herman Melville (2012). “Bartleby and Benito Cereno”, p.18, Courier Corporation

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• Hateful day when I received life!' I exclaimed in agony. 'Accursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust? God, in pity, made man beautiful and alluring, after his own image; but my form is a filthy type of yours, more horrid even from the very resemlance. Satan had his companions, fellow-devils, to admire and encourage him; but I am solitary and abhorred.' - Frankenstein

  Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

  Beautiful, Men, Agony

  Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (2015). “Frankenstein - The Modern Prometheus”, p.115, Jazzybee Verlag

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• And pity--people who inspire it in you are actually very powerful people. To get someone else to take care of you, to feel sorry for you--that takes a lot of strength, smarts, manipulation. Very powerful people.

  Deb Caletti

  Sorry, Powerful, Smart

  Deb Caletti (2010). “The Secret Life of Prince Charming”, p.79, Simon and Schuster

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• Pity is the most agreeable feeling among those who have little pride and no prospects of great conquests.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Pride, Feelings, Littles

  Friedrich Nietzsche (2010). “The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs”, p.87, Vintage

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• It was a pity thoughts always ran the easiest way, like water in old ditches.

  Walter de La Mare

  Water, Way, Ran

  Walter de la Mare “The Return”, Lulu.com

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• Every word I say has chains round its ankles; every thought I think is weighted with heavy weights. Since I was born, hasn't every word I've said, every thought I've thought, everything I've done, been tied up, weighted, chained? And mind you, I know that with all this I don't succeed. Or I succeed in flashes only too damned well. ...But think how hard I try and how seldom I dare. Think - and have a bit of pity. That is, if you ever think, you apes, which I doubt.

  Jean Rhys

  Thinking, Mind, Doubt

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• The human animal is a beast that dies but the fact that he’s dying don’t give him pity for others.

  Tennessee Williams

  Death, Animal, Giving

  Tennessee Williams (1991). “The Theatre of Tennessee Williams”, p.88, New Directions Publishing

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• It's not a problem. There are people out there with much worse problems than mine."-Cynthia "Doesn't make yours any more fun to bear."-Liza "No. But it does help with the self-pity."- Cynthia

  Jennifer Crusie

  Fun, Self, People

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• And therefore I looked down into the great pity of a person’s life on this earth. I don’t mean that we all end up dead, that’s not the great pity. I mean that he couldn’t tell me what he was dreaming, and I couldn’t tell him what was real.

  Denis Johnson

  Dream, Real, Mean

  Denis Johnson (2009). “Jesus' Son: Stories”, p.9, Macmillan

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• Even now, as I write this, I can still feel that tightness. And I want you to feel it--the wind coming off the river, the waves, the silence, the wooded frontier. You're at the bow of a boat on the Rainy River. You're twenty-one years old, you're scared, and there's a hard squeezing pressure in your chest. What would you do? Would you jump? Would you feel pity for yourself? Would you think about your family and your childhood and your dreams and all you're leaving behind? Would it hurt? Would it feel like dying? Would you cry, as I did?

  Tim O'Brien

  Dream, Hurt, Writing

  Tim O'Brien (2009). “The Things They Carried”, p.54, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• What would you do? Would you jump? Would you feel pity for yourself? Would you think about your family and your childhood and your dreams and all you're leaving behind? Would it hurt? Would it feel like dying? Would you cry, as I did?

  Tim O'Brien

  Dream, Hurt, Thinking

  Tim O'Brien (2009). “The Things They Carried”, p.54, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Jack? . . . No, there is very little music in the name Jack, if any at all, indeed. It does not thrill. It produces absolutely no vibrations . . . I have known several Jacks, and they all, without exception, were more than usually plain. Besides, Jack is a notorious domesticity for John! And I pity any woman who is married to a man called John. She would probably never be allowed to know the entrancing pleasure of a single moment’s solitude. The only really safe name is Ernest.

  Oscar Wilde

  Men, Names, Solitude

  Oscar Wilde (2000). “The Plays of Oscar Wilde”, p.373, Wordsworth Editions

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• Sympathy is what you have for someone after they die, pity you have for someone when they don't have a date to the biggest dance of the year. Empathy is what I do to you when you judge me. Envy is having pity on yourself. Can you discern the rest for yourself?

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Years, Envy, Judging

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• She lov'd me for the dangers I had pass'd, And I lov'd her that she did pity them

  William Shakespeare

  Danger

  William Shakespeare, Isaac Reed (1813). “The Plays of William Shakespeare”, p.889

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• The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.

  William Faulkner

  Hope, Writing, Heart

  Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Stockholm, 10 Dec. 1950

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• Aye, you're neither one thing nor yet quite t'other. Pity, but there 'tis.

  Eloise Jarvis McGraw

  One Thing

  Eloise Jarvis McGraw (2007). “The Moorchild”, p.177, Simon and Schuster

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• Pity is an emotion that can get you killed. The only thing more dangerous is blind hate, and maybe love.

  Laurell K. Hamilton

  Hate, Emotion, Blind

  Laurell K. Hamilton (2011). “Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Collection 1-5”, p.221, Penguin

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• Clary grinned. "A picnic? It's a little late for Central Park, don't you think? It's full of - " He waved a hand. "Faeries. I know." "I was going to say muggers," said Clary. "Though I pity the mugger who goes after you." "That is a wise attitude, and I commend you for it," said Jace, looking gratified.

  Cassandra Clare

  Wise, Attitude, Thinking

  "City of Bones". Book by Cassandra Clare, March 27, 2007.

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• Ben Adaephon Delat," Pearl said plaintively, "see the last who comes. You send me to my death." "I know," Quick Ben whispered. "Flee, then. I will hold them enough to ensure your escape no more." Quick Ben sank down past the roof. Before he passed from sight Pearl spoke again. "Ben Adaephon Delat, do you pity me?" "Yes" he replied softly, then pivoted and dropped down into darkness.

  Steven Erikson

  Past, Sight, Darkness

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• No beast so fierce but knows some touch of pity. But I know none, and therefore am no beast.

  William Shakespeare

  Fierce, Beast, Knows

  'Richard III' (1591) act 1, sc. 2, l. 71

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• in prosperity prayers seem but a mere medley of words, until misfortune comes and the unhappy sufferer first understands the meaning of the sublime language in which he invokes the pity of heaven!

  Alexandre Dumas

  Prayer, Heaven, Sublime

  Alexandre Dumas (2016). “The Count Of Monte Cristo (Illustrated Edition of the Adventure Classic): Historical Thriller from the renowned French writer, known for The Three Musketeers, The Black Tulip, Twenty Years After, La Reine Margot and The Man in the Iron Mask”, p.158, e-artnow (Open Publishing)

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• She dreams of him that has forgot her love; You dote on her that cares not for your love. 'Tis pity love should be so contrary; And thinking of it makes me cry 'alas!

  William Shakespeare

  Dream, Love You, Thinking

  William Shakespeare (1996). “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare”, p.208, Wordsworth Editions

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• When one acts on pity against justice, it is the good whom one punishes for the sake of the evil; when one saves the guilty from suffering, it is the innocent whom one forces to suffer. There is no escape from justice, nothing can be unearned and unpaid for in the universe, neither in matter nor in spirit—and if the guilty do not pay, then the innocent have to pay it.

  Ayn Rand

  Evil, Justice, Suffering

  Ayn Rand (2016). “Atlas Shrugged”, p.434, Hamilton Books

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• but very little achievement is required in order to pity another man's shortcomings.

  George Eliot

  Men, Order, Littles

  George Eliot (2015). “Middlemarch”, p.228, Booklassic

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• The crying sounded even louder out of doors. It was as if all the pain in the world had found a voice. Yet had I known such pain was in the next room, and had it been dumb, I believe—I have thought since—I could have stood it well enough. It is when suffering finds a voice and sets our nerves quivering that this pity comes troubling us. But in spite of the brilliant sunlight and the green fans of the trees waving in the soothing sea-breeze, the world was a confusion, blurred with drifting black and red phantasms, until I was out of earshot of the house in the stone wall.

  H. G. Wells

  Fear, Wall, Pain

  H. G. Wells (2015). “The Island of Dr. Moreau”, p.36, Booklassic

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