PITY, n. A failing sense of exemption, inspired by contrast. — Ambrose Bierce
The crushing, pitiful, and frequently just plain risible pathos of an unsuccessful actor/performer's life is well charted. — Arabella Weir
Pity for those who have been beaten till the arrival of the judges — Greek Proverbs
To pity distress is but human; to relieve it is Godlike. — Horace Mann
A woman's pity, which is talkative, carries the sick person's bed to the public marketplace. — Friedrich Nietzsche
We may have uneasy feelings for seeing a creature in distress without pity; for we have not pity unless we wish to relieve them. — Samuel Johnson
Self pity is easily the most destructive of the non-pharmaceutical narcotics; it is addictive, gives momentary pleasure and separates the victim from reality. — John Gardner
You're the one who is weak. You will never know love or friendship. And I feel sorry for you. — J. K. Rowling
It is better to be envied than pitied. — Herodotus
Pity the man who has no nails to scratch himself — Greek Proverbs
Of the woes Of unhappy poverty, none is more difficult to bear Than that it heaps men with ridicule. — Juvenal
Compassion and pity are not the same: pity is looking down on someone, feeling sorry for them and offering nothing; compassion is seeing their pain and offering them understanding. — Jasinda Wilder
Self-pity is our worst enemy and if we yield to it, we can never do anything wise in this world. — Helen Keller
It is a comfort to the miserable to have comrades in misfortune, but it is a poor comfort after all. — Christopher Marlowe
Even your pity is like a blast of wind and the words you speak would strip a tree of its blossoms. — Tulsidas
Short Pitiable Quotes
If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men the most pitiable. — Paul the Apostle
There is no class so pitiably wretched as that which possesses money and nothing else. — Andrew Carnegie
Poverty, to be picturesque, should be rural. Suburban misery is as hideous as it is pitiable. — Anthony Trollope
You are in a pitiable condition if you have to conceal what you wish to tell. — Publilius Syrus
Hateful is the power, and pitiable is the life, of those who wish to be feared rather than loved. — Cornelius Nepos
I'm not a pitiable creature. It's just that I suffer very eloquently. — Joni Mitchell
All deaths are hateful to miserable mortals, but the most pitiable death of all is to starve. — Homer
It is more pitiable once to have been rich than not to be rich now. — Jean Antoine Petit-Senn
to my thinking, it is more pitiable to bore than to be bored. — George Eliot
Few things are more laughably pitiable than authority once it has been successfully defied. — L. Neil Smith
Pitiful Quotes
If you have men who will exclude any of God's creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men. — Francis of Assisi
For the record, prejudices can kill, and suspicion can destroy, and a thoughtless frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all its own for the children, and the children yet unborn. And the pity of it is that these things cannot be confined to the Twilight Zone. — Rod Serling
Anger, resentment, envy, and self-pity are wasteful reactions. They greatly drain one's time. They sap energy better devoted to productive endeavors. — Ruth Bader Ginsburg
We are all jellyfish, too pitiful and too afraid of being disliked to be honest. — May Sarton
A mother's love for her child is like nothing else in the world. It knows no law, no pity, it dares all things and crushes down remorselessly all that stands in its path. — Agatha Christie
If I am mad, it is mercy! May the gods pity the man who in his callousness can remain sane to the hideous end! — H. P. Lovecraft
The deeper minds of all ages have had pity for animals. — Friedrich Nietzsche
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
Speech is a powerful master and achieves the most divine feats with the smallest and least evident body. It can stop fear, relieve pain, create joy, and increase pity — Gorgias
Self-pity is easily the most destructive of the non-pharmaceutical narcotics; it is addictive, gives momentary pleasure and separates the victim from reality. — John W. Gardner
The Emperor himself amassed his great riches. The older he grew, the greater became his greed, his pitiable cupidity... he and his people took millions from the state treasurer and left cemeteries full of people who had died of hunger, cemeteries visible from the windows of the royal palace — Haile Selassie
Our destiny often looks like a fruit-tree in winter. Who would think from its pitiable aspect that those rigid boughs, those rough twigs could next spring again be green, bloom, and even bear fruit? Yet we hope it, we know it. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
If your opponent is playing several shots in vain attempts to extricate himself from a bunker, do not stand near him and audibly count his strokes. It would be justifiable homicide if he wound up his pitiable exhibition by applying his niblick to your head. — Harry Vardon
Every virile people has established colonial power. All great nations in the fullness of their strength have desired to set their mark upon barbarian lands and those who fail to participate in this great rivalry will play a pitiable role in time to come. — Heinrich von Treitschke
Let no one be ashamed to say yes today if yesterday he said no. Or to say no today if yesterday he said yes. For that is life. Never to have changed-what a pitiable thing of which to boast! — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
There were too many lemmings - that was the core of their difficulty. None wanted solitude, but a crowd of this size was a torment. Being sensitive little beasts, they became overstimulated by superfluous numbers of their own kind. They had tried to escape, but with pitiable irony, all tried to escape together. — Sally Carrighar
Those who sell their liberty for security are understandable, if pitiable, creatures. Those who sell the liberty of others for wealth, power, or even a moments respite deserve only the end of a rope. — L. Neil Smith
There is not much to be got anywhere in the world. It is filled with misery and pain; if a man escapes these, boredeom lies in wait for him at every corner. Nay more; it is evil which generally has the upper hand, and folly that makes the most noise. Fate is cruel and mankind pitiable. — Arthur Schopenhauer
I think it's ill-advised to attribute pathologies to healthy people. It doesn't help normal, healthy, thriving children to be viewed as pitiable and fragile. — Christina Hoff Sommers
Genius of a kind has always been with me; an empty heart that has taken on a certain wooden quality; an excellent, strong woman's body and a pitiably starved soul. — Mary MacLane
Fear, O Achilles, the wrath of heaven; think on your own father and have compassion upon me, who am the more pitiable — Homer
The psychiatrist knows only too well how each of us becomes the helpless but not pitiable victim of his own sentiments. Sentimentality is the superstructure erected upon brutality. — Carl Jung
There is nothing more pitiable than a soulless, sapless, shriveled church, seeking to thrive in a worldly atmosphere, rooted in barren professions, bearing no fruit, and maintaining only the semblance of existence; such a church cannot long survive. — George C. Lorimer
And that wreched creature without hands or feet, who had to be put to bed and fed like a child, that pitiable remnant of a man, whose almost vanished life was nothing more than one scream of pain, cried out in furious indignation: 'What a fool one must be to go and kill oneself!' " - 'Joy of Life — Emile Zola
The Germans in basements were pitiable, surely, but at least they had a chance. That basement was not a washroom. They were not sent there for a shower. For those people, life was still achievable. — Markus Zusak
I seem to be the only person in the world who doesn't mind being pitied. If you love me, pity me. The human state is pitiable: born to die, capable of so much, accomplishing so little; killing instead of creating, destroying instead of building, hating instead of loving. Pitiful, pitiful. — Jessamyn West
A soul so pitiably forlorn, If such do on this earth abide, May season apathy with scorn, May turn indifference to pride; And still be not unblest- compared With him who grovels, self-debarred From all that lies within the scope Of holy faith and christian hope; Or, shipwrecked, kindles on the coast False fires, that others may be lost. — William Wordsworth
Opportunities are everywhere. Needed are eyes to see the pitiable plight and ears to hear the silent pleadings of a broken heart. — Thomas S. Monson
According to the estimate of a prominent advertising firm, above 90 per cent, of the earning capacity of the prominent nostrums is represented by their advertising. And all this advertising is based on the well-proven theory of the public's pitiable ignorance and gullibility in the vitally important matter of health. — Samuel Hopkins Adams
Natural death is independent of all reason and is really an irrational death, in which the pitiable substance of the shell determines how long the kernel is to exist or not; in which, accordingly, the stunted, diseased and dull witted jailer is lord, and indicates the moment at which his distinguished prisoner shall die. — Friedrich Nietzsche
That little hypocrites and half-crazed people dare to imagine that on their account the laws of nature are constantly broken; such an enhancement of every kind of selfishness to infinity, to impudence, cannot be branded with sufficient contempt. And yet Christianity owes its triumph to this pitiable flattery of personal vanity. — Friedrich Nietzsche
We become pitiable and ridiculous when we imbibe an unreasoned mysticism in our life without any natural or substantial basis. People like us, who are proud to be revolutionary in every sense, should always be prepared to bear all the difficulties, anxieties, pain and suffering which we invite upon ourselves by the struggles initiated by us and for which we call ourselves revolutionary. — Bhagat Singh
Man's sense of values is so degraded that he does not revere the Geetha, as much as he values and scans the pages of the daily newspaper. This is to be attributed to sheer ignorance and perversity, or pitiable fate. — Sathya Sai Baba
I would gladly say 'Heil Hitler!' and at once part company with him, realizing what a pitiable insult it is to such a great man to try to flatter him with such an imitation which he has always disdained. His way is for Germany, ours is for Britain; let us tread our paths with mutual respect, which is rarely increased by borrowing. — William Joyce
That cold accretion called the world, so terrible in the mass, is so non formidable, even pitiable, in its units. — Thomas Hardy
Our condition as men is risky and ticklish enough. One can not be sure of himself and his fortune an hour, but he may be whisked off into some pitiable or ridiculous plight. — Ralph Waldo Emerson
I am in the pitiable situation of feeling all the force of temptation without having the strength to succumb to it. — Lord Chesterfield
Rest is valuable only so far as it is a contrast. Pursued as an end, it becomes a most pitiable condition. — David Swing
Men would never be superstitious, if they could govern all their circumstances by set rules, or if they were always favoured by fortune: but being frequently driven into straits where rules are useless, and being often kept fluctuating pitiably between hope and fear by the uncertainty of fortune's greedily coveted favours, they are consequently for the most part, very prone to credulity. — Baruch Spinoza
I have seen the Indian in his forests, and the Negro in his chains, and thought, as I contemplated their pitiable condition, that I saw the very extreme of human wretchedness; but I did not then know the condition of unfortunate Ireland...In all countries, more or less, paupers may be discovered; but an entire nation of paupers is what was never seen until it was shown in Ireland. — Gustave de Beaumont
If we decide, we can change the pitiable condition of Indian economy. We have to take up the responsibility and show commitment. — Narendra Modi
The practical life of a vast number of people is not, as a matter of fact, worth while at all. It is like an impressive fur coat with no one inside it. One sees many of these coats occupying positions of great responsibility. Hans Andersen's story of the king with no clothes told one bitter and common truth about human nature; but the story of the clothes with no king describes a situation just as common and even more pitiable. — Evelyn Underhill
The technique of winning is so shoddy, the terms of winning are so ignoble, the tenure of winning is so brief; and the specter of the has-been-a shameful rather than a pitiable sight today-brings a sudden chill even to our sunlit moments. — Louis Kronenberger
Identification with one's office or title is very attractive indeed, which is precisely why so many men are nothing more than the decorum accorded to them by society. In vain would one look for a personality behind the husk. Underneath one would find a very pitiable little creature. That is why the office is so attractive: it offers easy compensation for personal deficiencies. — Carl Jung
Why did you act in this way, you pitiable ones? Make a bow of repentance, recognize your fault, be sorry for your nakedness. Neither one of them could blame himself, neither of them had the least bit of humility. — Dorotheus of Gaza
In Conclusion
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