Pity Quotes

There is an electric fire in human nature tending to purify - so that among these human creatures there is continually some birth of new heroism. The pity is that we must wonder at it, as we should at finding a pearl in rubbish.

John Keats

Human speech is like a cracked cauldron on which we bang out tunes that make bears dance, when what we want is to move the stars to pity

Gustave Flaubert

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

Ice-cream is exquisite. What a pity it isn't illegal.

Voltaire

It is a pity that, as one gradually gains experience, one loses one's youth.

Vincent van Gogh

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

Benjamin Franklin

Our physical organs are animal forces, which will quite naturally obey a man who is prepared to command them. They are there to serve him, not to enslave him. But the ego is so lazy that it makes him quite glad to abdicate this power in return for the secret satisfaction of pitying his own sufferings, or attracting attention to his pathetic case. Most of our pathological conditions are aggravated by this unconfessed indulgence. The same applies to our personal dramas and daily worries; we should have the courage to admit that they feed largely on the pity of others, and on our own. In most cases, what would be left of them if we passed them over in total silence?

Isha De Lubicz

The drama is not a mere copy of nature, not a facsimile. It is the free running hand of genius, under the impression of its liveliest wit or most passionate impulses, a thousand times adorning or feeling all as it goes; and you must read it, as the healthy instinct of audiences almost always does, if the critics will let them alone, with a grain of allowance, and a tendency to go away with as much of it for use as is necessary, and the rest for the luxury of laughter, pity, or poetical admiration.

Leigh Hunt

The media network has its IDOLS, but its principal idol is its own style which generates an aura of winning and leaves the rest in darkness. It recognizes neither pity nor pitilessness.

John Berger

The truly brave, When they behold the brave oppressed with odds, Are touched with a desire to shield and save:-- A mixture of wild beasts and demi-gods Are they--now furious as the sweeping wave, Now moved with pity; even as sometimes nods The rugged tree unto the summer wind, Compassion breathes along the savage mind.

Lord Byron

For the sense of smell, almost more than any other, has the power to recall memories and it is a pity that you use it so little.

Rachel Carson

Human affairs inspire in noble hearts only two feelingsóadmiration or pity.

Anatole France

It seems to me, that if people only knew how hard it was for me to endure life, they would find it easier to forgive me for all the wrong things Ive done and all the good things that I have failed to do. And they would still find a little compassion within them to pity me.

Ivo Andric

All pity is self-pity.

Wystan Hugh Auden

Unendowed with wealth or pity, Little birds with scarlet legs Sitting on their speckled eggs, Eye each flu-infected city. Altogether elsewhere, vast Herds of reindeer move across Miles and miles of golden moss, Silently and very fast.

Wystan Hugh Auden