These pity quotes will inspire you. Pity is sympathetic sorrow for one suffering, distressed, or unhappy.
A collection of motivating, happy, and encouraging pity quotes, pity sayings, and pity proverbs.
Best Pity 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
- “Ice-cream is exquisite – what a pity it isn’t illegal.” ~ Voltaire
- “Pity the selfishness of lovers: it is brief, a forlorn hope; it is impossible.” ~ Elizabeth Bowen
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“I pity the man who wants a coat so cheap that the man or woman who produces the cloth will starve in the process.” ~ Benjamin Harrison
- “You must not pity me because my sixtieth year finds me still astonished. To be astonished is one of the surest ways of not growing old too quickly.” ~ Sidonie Gabrielle Colette , Pity quotes me
- “There is no need to waste pity on young girls who are having their moments of disillusionment, for in another moment they will recover their illusion.” ~ Sidonie Gabrielle Colette
- “I tell people to monitor their self-pity. Self-pity is very unattractive.” ~ Patty Duke , Self pity quotes
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“Suffering… We owe to it all that is good in us, all that gives value to life; we owe to it pity, we owe to it courage, we owe to it all the virtues.” ~ Anatole France
- “There is little for the great part of the history of the world except the bitter tears of pity and the hot tears of wrath.” ~ Woodrow Wilson
- “pity me that the heart is slow to learn what the swift mind beholds at every turn.” ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay
- “There are two kinds of pity. One, the weak and sentimental kind, which is really no more than the heart’s impatience to be rid as quickly as possible of the painful emotion aroused by the sight of another’s unhappiness, that pity which is not compassion, but only an instinctive desire to fortify one’s own soul agains the sufferings of another; and the other, the only one at counts, the unsentimental but creative kind, which knows what it is about and is determined to hold out, in patience and forbearance, to the very limit of its strength and even beyond.” ~ Stefan Zweig
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“Pity the man who has a character to support – it is worse than a large family – he is silent poor indeed.” ~ Henry David Thoreau
- “Optimism and self-pity are the positive and negative poles of modern cowardice.” ~ Cyril Connolly
- “Those who do not complain are never pitied.” ~ Jane Austen
- “Self-pity is our worst enemy and if we yield to it, we can never do anything wise in this world.” ~ Helen Keller
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“Pity melts the mind to love.” ~ John Dryden
- “Pity cost nothing and ain’t worth nothing.” ~ Josh Billings
- “Self-pity in its early stage is as snug as a feather mattress. Only when it hardens does it become uncomfortable.” ~ Maya Angelou
- “Honesty is as rare as a man without self-pity.” ~ Stephen Vincent Benet
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“More helpful than all wisdom is one draught of simple human pity that will not forsake us.” ~ George Eliot
- “It is only a step from boredom to disillusionment, which leads naturally to self-pity, which in turn ends in chaos.” ~ Manly Hall
- “A mixture of admiration and pity is one of the surest recipes for affection.” ~ Arthur Helps
- “I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself.” ~ D. H. Lawrence
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“Pity the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” ~ Don Marquis
- “Self-pity comes so naturally to all of us. The most solid happiness can be shaken by the compassion of a fool.” ~ Andre Maurois
- “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.” ~ Bertrand Russell
- “A pity beyond all telling is hidden in the heart of love.” ~ William Butler Yeats
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“Laugh at yourself and at life. Not in the spirit of derision or whining self-pity, but as a remedy, a miracle drug, that will ease your pain, cure your depression, and help you to put in perspective that seemingly terrible defeat… Never take yourself too seriously.” ~ Og Mandino
- “I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself” ~ D. H. Lawrence
- “Never feel self-pity, the most destructive emotion there is. How awful to caught up in the terrible squirrel cage of self.” ~ Millicent Fenwick
- “Pity a thing often avowed, seldom felt; hatred is a thing often felt, seldom avowed.” ~ Charles Caleb Colton
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“Pity those whom nature abuses, never those who abuse nature.” ~ Richard Brinsley Sheridan
- “To love with the spirit is to pity, and he who pities most loves most.” ~ Miguel de Unamuno , Pity quotes about love
- “Pity and friendship are two passions incompatible with each other.” ~ Oliver Goldsmith
- “It is easy to condemn, it is better to pity.” ~ Lyman Abbott
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“God put self-pity by the side of despair like the cure by the side of the disease.” ~ Albert Camus
- “Soft pity enters an iron gate.” ~ William Shakespeare
- “Where pity is, for pity makes the world
Soft to the weak and noble for the strong.” ~ Edwin Arnold - “Pity is best taught by fellowship in woe.” ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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“Self-pity comes so naturally to all of us.” ~ Andre Maurois
- “The deeper minds of all ages have had pity for animals.” ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
- “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.” ~ John Galsworthy
- “Pity may represent little more than the impersonal concern which prompts the mailing of a check, but true sympathy is the personal concern which demands the giving of one’s soul.” ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
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“It’s a mistake to confuse pity with love.” ~ Stanley Kubrick
- “What is pity but the vice of kindness.” ~ Emile M. Cioran
- “Pity is always twinged with disgust.” ~ Daniel Quinn
- “Pity is for the living, envy is for the dead.” ~ Mark Twain
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“Almost all women have hearts full of pity.” ~ William Makepeace Thackeray
- “It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.” ~ W. E. B. Du Bois
- “The all-seeing eye of God beheld our deplorable state; infinite pity touched the heart of the Father of mercies, and infinite wisdom laid the plan of our recovery.” ~ David Brainerd
- “We need to suffer, that we may learn to pity.” ~ Letitia Elizabeth Landon
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“They tell us that “Pity is akin to Love;” if so, Pity must be a poor relation.” ~ Arthur Helps
- “Pity is the deadliest feeling that can be offered to a woman.” ~ Vicki Baum , Feeling pity quotes
- “It is easy to pity when once one’s vanity has been tickled.” ~ Willa Cather
- “If you wish me well, do not stand pitying me, but lend me some succor as fast as you can; for pity is but cold comfort when one is up to the chin in water, and within a hair’s breadth of starving or drowning.” ~ Aesop
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“A woman’s pity often opens the door to love.” ~ Henry Ward Beecher
- “Do not pity the dead, Harry.” ~ J. K. Rowling
- “I shall despair. There is no creature loves me;
And if I die no soul will pity me:
And wherefore should they, since that I myself
Find in myself no pity to myself?” ~ William Shakespeare - “However we may pity the mother whose health and even life is imperiled by the performance of her natural duty, there yet remains no sufficient reason for condoning the direct murder of the innocent.” ~ Pope Pius XI
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“All who consult on doubtful matters should be void of hatred, friendship, anger, and pity.” ~ Sallust
- “The teeth of self-pity had gnawed away her essential self.” ~ Willa Gibbs
- “A book or poem which has no pity in it had better not be written.” ~ Oscar Wilde
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“Soft pity never leaves the gentle breast where love has been received a welcome guest.” ~ Richard Brinsley Sheridan
- “A woman’s pity sometimes makes her mad.” ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning
- “Of all the paths [that] lead to a woman’s love Pity’s the straightest.” ~ Francis Beaumont
