Quotes about Pity

On April 30, 1991 - on that one day - 138,000 people drowned in Bangladesh. At dinner I mentioned to our daughter, who was then seven years old, that it was hard to imagine 138,000 people drowning.
"No, it's easy," she said. "Lots and lots of dots, in blue water."

Many are those who pity others while being blind to their own misfortunes.

"Poor suffering humanity" -- it is inescapably true -- suffers from nothing else so gravely as it does from its own myopic accommodations to suffering, and from its benighted characterological determination to foster even more profound and systematic suffering for itself. Of all suffering, the suffering caused by the tendency of most people to use their potential rationality, spirit, consciousness, etc. as if it were a blunt utilitarian or libidinal instrument (i.e. for purposes of banauseia or douleia), is the stupidest, the most needless, the most wasteful and obscene. But this suffering is only made worse, only confirmed in its self-pitying irrealities and self-unaccountability, by being pitied and forgiven and dismissed as all-too-natural, so "natural" that it is supposed to be beyond all moral or valuational criticism. The only solution or therapy for this perverse and profound self-suffering -- the suffering of one's own misapplied active-subjective powers as if they were conditions beyond one's control -- is truly even more acute suffering, from disillusioning the tribal myths that make the Many into a Many, and the self-darkening "faith" that keeps the theater of the modern Cave in business as a growth-industry. Responding to all the problems of human beings with indiscriminate pity (as Dostoevsky and Nietzsche saw) merely makes one into an enabler, a compliant servant in the opium den of the modern Maya.

Our physical organs (and this cannot be too often repeated) 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?

A pity beyond all telling is hid in the heart of love.

What the poor need most is not pity but love. They need to feel respect for their human dignity, which is neither less nor different from the dignity of any other human being.

Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a great ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair. I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy - ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss.  I have sought it finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined. This is what I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life, this is what at last I have found. With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved. Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate this evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer. This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me.

Self-pity is easily the most destructive of the nonpharmaceutical narcotics; it is addictive, gives momentary pleasure and separates the victim from reality.

It takes a great deal of character strength to apologize quickly out of one's heart rather than out of pity. A person must possess himself and have a deep sense of security in fundamental principles and values in order to genuinely apologize.

It was such a lovely day I thought it a pity to get up.

But whate'er you are That in this desert inaccessible, Under the shade of melancholy boughs, Lose and neglect the creeping hours of time; If you have ever looked on better days, If ever been where bells knoll'd to church, If ever sat at any good man's feast, If ever from your eyelids wiped a tear, And know what 'tis to pity and be pitied, Let gentleness my strong enforcement be. . . .

If you have tears, prepare to shed them now. You all do know this mantle: I remember The first time ever Caesar put it on; 'Twas on a summer's evening, in his tent, That day he overcame the Nervii: Look, in this place ran Cassius' dagger through: See what a rent the envious Casca made: Through this the well-beloved Brutus stabb'd; And as he pluck'd his cursed steel away, Mark how the blood of Caesar follow'd it, As rushing out of doors, to be resolved If Brutus so unkindly knock'd, or no; For Brutus, as you know, was Caesar's angel: Judge, O you gods, how dearly Caesar loved him! This was the most unkindest cut of all; For when the noble Caesar saw him stab, Ingratitude, more strong than traitors' arms, Quite vanquish'd him: then burst his mighty heart; And, in his mantle muffling up his face, Even at the base of Pompey's Statua, Which all the while ran blood, great Cæsar fell, O! what a fall was there, my countrymen; Then I, and you, and all of us fell down, Whilst bloody treason flourish'd over us. O! now you weep, and I perceive you feel The dint of pity; these are gracious drops. Kind souls, what, weep you when you but behold Our Caesar's vesture wounded? Look you here, Here is himself, marr'd, as you see, with traitors. . . . . Good friends, sweet friends, let me not stir you up To such a sudden flood of mutiny. They that have done this deed are honourable: What private griefs they have, alas! I know not, That made them do it; they are wise and honourable, And will no doubts with reason answer you. I come not, friends, to steal away your hearts: I am no orator, as Brutus is; But, as you know me all, a plain blunt man, That love my friend. . . . . For I have neither wit, nor words, nor worth, Action , nor utterance, nor power of speech, To stir men's blood; I only speak right on; I tell you that which you yourselves do know.

The more pity that fools may not speak wisely what wise men do foolishly.

A strong nor'wester's blowing, Bill, Hark! Don't ye hear it roar, now? Lord help 'em, how I pities all Unhappy folks on shore now!

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 the 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. See Poets & Writers

It is his [the poet's, the writer's] 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. See Poets & Writers

He [the writer] must, teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed - love and honor and pity and compassion and sacrifice. See Poets & Writers

I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure: that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. 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, address upon receiving the Nobel Prize for literature, Stockholm, Sweden, December 10, 1950. - Faulkner, Essays, Speeches & Public Letters, p. 120 (1951). This text is from Faulkner's original typescript; it was slightly revised from that which he delivered in Stockholm, and which was published in American newspapers at the time (p. 121).

The kindest and the happiest pair Will find occasion to forbear; And something, every day they live, To pity, and perhaps forgive.

A pity beyond all telling Is hid in the heart of love.

To Mercy Pity Peace and Love All pray in their distress, And to these virtues of delight Return their thankfulness. For Mercy Pity Peace and Love Is God our father dear. And Mercy Pity Peace and Love Is Man his child and care. Then every man of every clime That prays in his distress Prays to the human form divine: Love Mercy Pity Peace. And all must love the human form In heathen, Turk, or Jew. Where Mercy, Love and Pity dwell There God is dwelling too.

There was a child went forth everyday, And the first object he looked upon and received with wonder or pity or dread, that object he became, And that object became part of him for the day or a certain part of the day... or for many years or stretching cycles of years...

What bitterness could have enveloped them. They could have taken the attitude that the Lord was unjust. They had lived good lives. Why did this have to happen to a boy with such bright prospects? But rather, this was their attitude, in their own words: "We shall be eternally grateful for the thirteen wonderful years that we were privileged to have him in our midst. We know that we are blessed in the knowledge that we are sealed as an eternal family. We know that Carl was preparing to fill a mission. We know that he was prepared for that mission and that he is now filling it." No self-pity here, but rather an attitude of faith and hope and optimism, even under the most trying of circumstances!

A wayfarer carried a heavy sack about which he complained unceasingly. From none could he get help or comfort. And as he slowly journeyed, groaning under his burden, the Angel of Optimism came to him and spoke kindly, saying: "Brother, what does thou carry?" The man answered surlily, "My worries." The angel smiled pityingly upon him and said, "Let us look into thy burden and examine thy worries." And so they looked in. But lo! the sack was empty. "Why surely," cried the man, "there were two great worries, too heavy for man to bear. But-ah, yes, I had forgot-one was a worry of yesterday, and so it is gone." "And the other?" "That-why, that was a worry of tomorrow, and it-it has not yet come." Then the angel smiled with infinite pity, saying: "Hearken! He who bows himself down under the worries of yesterday and tomorrow wears himself out for naught. But he who carries only the worries of today has no need of a sack for his sorrows. If thou will cast this black thing aside, and give all thy strength and cheer and courage to the things of today, real misfortune never can burden thee." Wondering, the man did as the angel commanded. And as he took up his journey and went lightly, swiftly on, his heart and his hands were free to relieve many a brother wayfarer of his burden and to pluck sweet fruits and flowers along the wayside. And when he came at last to the setting of the sun it was with smiles and a song.

Pity is reserved for those who have no fight left in them.

Ah, some love Paris, And some Purdue. But love is an archer with a low I.Q. A bold, bad bowman, and innocent of pity. So I'm in love with New York City.

Could we look into the hearts concealed from us, we should often pity where we hate, love where we think we can never forgive, and admire where we curl the lip with scorn and indignation.

No man made great by death offers more hope to lowly pride than does Abraham Lincoln; for while living he was himself so simple as often to be dubbed a fool. Foolish he was, they said, in losing his youthful heart to a grave and living his life on married patience; foolish in pitting his homely ignorance against Douglas, brilliant, courtly, and urbane; foolish in setting himself to do the right in a world where the day goes mostly to the strong; foolish in dreaming of freedom for a long-suffering folk whom the North is as anxious to keep out as the South was to keep down; foolish in choosing the silent Grant to lead to victory the hesitant armies of the North; foolish, finally, in presuming that government for the people must be government of the people and by the people. Foolish many said; foolish many, many believed. This Lincoln, whom so many living friends and foes alike deemed foolish, hid his bitterness in laughter; fed his sympathy on solitude; and met recurring disaster with whimsicality to muffle the murmur of a bleeding heart. Out of the tragic sense of life he pitied where others blamed; bowed his own shoulders with the woes of the weak; endured humanely his little day of chance power; and won through death what life disdains to bestow upon such simple souls - lasting peace and everlasting glory.

[Burke] is not affected by the reality of distress touching his heart, but by the showy resemblance of it striking his imagination. He pities the plumage, but forgets the dying bird.

Pity the sorrows of a poor old man, Whose trembling limbs have borne him to your door, Whose days are dwindled to the shortest span; Oh give relief, and Heaven will bless your store.