Those who do not complain are never pitied.

Yet, let it not be thought that I would exclude pity from the human mind. There are scarcely any that are not, to some degree, possessed of this pleasing softness; but it is at best but a short-lived passion, and seldom affords distress more than transitory assistance; with some it scarce lasts from the first impulse till the hand can be put into the pocket.

Pity is an attribute of men rather than of gods.

Pity is a hierarchical concept. It implies a looking down upon another. It is condescension. Pity arises out of the maintenance of distance between people. It has nothing of the adventure of intimacy and commitment that are essential to compassion.

A tear dries quickly when it is shed for troubles of others.

Pity is an emotion equally unpleasant to the bestower as to the recipient.

No beast so fierce but knows some touch of pity.

Pity is fear which has been mediated by a certain distance--and by a certain closeness. We do not feel pity for ourselves or for those so close to us as to be parts of ourselves; we feel pity only for others. On the other hand, we do not feel pity for misfortune pure and simple; we do not feel pity for men qua men. We feel pity for unfortunate men who are like ourselves, because then we imagine ourselves in the place of the other.

Self-pity is like a dog eating its own vomit or a pig rolling around in its own waste.

If a madman were to come into this room with a stick in his hand, no doubt we should pity the state of his mind; but our primary consideration would be to take care of ourselves. We should knock him down first, and pity him afterwards.

Pity is for this life, pity is the worm

inside the meat, pity is the meat, pity

is the shaking pencil, pity is the shaking voice--

not enough money, not enough love--pity

for all of us--it is our grace, walking

down the ramp or on the moving sidewalk,

sitting in a chair, reading the paper, pity,

turning a leaf to the light, arranging a thorn.

When you visualized a man or woman carefully, you could always begin to feel pity — that was a quality God's image carried with it. When you saw the lines at the corners of the eyes, the shape of the mouth, how the hair grew, it was impossible to hate. Hate was just a failure of imagination.

God put self-pity by the side of despair like the cure by the side of the disease.

The heart of pity is the mortal helping the mortal.

Self-pity is like a clog in the pipe that stops the flow of life. It is the hand that takes rather than gives.

A pity beyond all telling

Is hid in the heart of love.

When Man evolved Pity, he did a queer thing--deprived himself of the power of living life as it is without wishing it to become something different.

We pity in others only those evils which we have ourselves experienced.

Pity, and forbearance, and long-sufferance, and fair interpretation, and excusing our brother, and taking in the best sense, and passing the gentlest sentence, are as certainly our duty, and owing to every person that does offend and can repent, as calling to account can be owing to the law, and are first to be paid; and he that does not so is an unjust person.

If the secret sorrows of everyone could be read on their forehead, how many who now cause envy would suddenly become the objects of pity?

Pity is based in self love; it is benevolence towards those in sorrow, and its root is in a likeness to ourselves.

To be the object of pity is a situation very humiliating. For although Pity is said to be fitter to love, and a certain degree of tender affection is always mixed with it, there is no doubt at the same time such an inferiority in being pitied as is not consistent with dignity of character.

Even your pity is like a blast of wind and the words you speak would strip a tree of its blossoms.

I have known men ... when they have been struggling for work and bread, never gaining enough of either to justify any real hope for the future, and I know how easy it is for a man in such a position to take the step or two that shall separate him from his self-respect, and how, when that is gone, the weight gets heavier and heavier, until he seems alone, separated, until the voice of a man passing him seems to come from a distance, and a word or touch of pity is like a hand stretched out across a gulf to him. It is more; it is like the voice of an angel speaking to him from heaven.

Pity is like lust ... both like to masquerade as love and it's powerfully hard to know the difference when you're in the throes of it.

Pity is like eating mustard without beef.

Every appeal to generosity, to gratitude, to pity, is like the poor martin's best-tempered mortar applied to the unctuous marble: met by refusals polite and plausible, from the surface of a heart fat as grease and hard as stone it falls off ineffectual.

Self-pity is like a snake that gets in your brain and lays its eggs there.

Pity is like a swamp. The longer we stand in the muck, the more we stink.

To love with the spirit is to pity, and he who pities most loves most. Men aflame with a burning charity towards their neighbours are thus enkindled because they have touched the depth of their own misery, their own apparentiality, their own nothingness, and then, turning their newly opened eyes upon their fellows, they have seen that they also are miserable, apparential, condemned to nothingness, and they have pitied them and loved them.

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