Pity Proverbs

Sayings about Pity

It is better to be the object of jealousy, than of pity. ~ Moroccan Proverb

If you lose your wife and fifteen pennies -- oh ! what a pity about the money. ~ French Proverb

When a blind man bears the standard, pity those who follow. ~ French Proverb

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? ~ Italian Proverb

Where there is no fear, there is no pity. ~ Estonian Proverb

A snake deserves no pity. ~ Yiddish Proverb

The fly has no pity for the thin man. ~ Congolese Proverb

Go to friends for advice; to women for pity; to strangers for charity; to relatives for nothing. ~ Spanish Proverb

Pity the stranger, even if he is rich. ~ Yemeni Proverb

Sometimes I go about in pity for myself, and all the while a great wind is bearing me across the sky. ~ Ojibway Indian Proverb

Quotations about Pity

I'd rather have anybody's hate than their pity. ~ S. E. Hinton

More helpful than all wisdom is one draught of simple human pity that will not forsake us. ~ George Eliot

Pity is always twinged with disgust. ~ Daniel Quinn

Take out pity and the whole structure of our traditional morality crumbles to pieces. ~ Frank Thilly

Pity in its embrace strangles respect. ~ Abraham Miller

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

Reform is born of need, not pity. ~ Rebecca Harding Davis

They tell us that "Pity is akin to Love;" if so, Pity must be a poor relation. ~ Arthur Helps

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

Pity is the most agreeable feeling among those who have little pride and no prospects of great conquests. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

The heart of pity is the mortal helping the mortal. ~ Carolt T. Olson

Self-pity comes so naturally to all of us. The most solid happiness can be shaken by the compassion of a fool. ~ Andre Maurois

Pity is often an eloquent advocate. ~ Edward Counsel

Pity makes suffering contagious. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

If you wish me well, do not stand pitying me, but lend me some succour 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

Pity is a thing often vowed, seldom felt; hatred is a thing often felt, seldom avowed. ~ Charles Caleb Colton

Pity is a noose we can hang ourselves with if we're not careful. ~ Jared Estes

To love with the spirit is to pity, and he who pities most loves most. ~ Miguel De Unamuno

The deadliest feeling that can be offered to a woman is pity. ~ Vicki Baum

Pity is treason. ~ Maximilien Robespierre

It is when suffering finds a voice and sets our nerves quivering that this pity comes troubling us. ~ H. G. Wells

Pity those who nature abuses; never those who abuse nature. ~ Richard Brinsley Sheridan

A pity beyond all telling, is hid in the heart of love. ~ William Butler Yeats

The recognition of pain and fear in others give rise in us to pity, and in our pity is our humanity, our redemption. ~ Dean Koontz

Pity is more spectator-like than compassion; we can pity people while maintaining a safe emotional distance from them. ~ Aaron Ben-Ze’ev

Pity is the feeling which arrests the mind in the presence of whatsoever is grave and constant in human sufferings and unites it with the human sufferer. ~James Joyce

Pity is an attribute of men rather than of gods. ~ R.P. Winnington-Ingram

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

To a sensitive being, pity is not seldom pain. ~ Herman Melville

Pity is the feeling of well-intentioned people who are unable to act. ~ Pramoedya Ananta Toer

Pity is like a kind of illness that comes when it is too late and you can't do anything about it. ~ Rober Lalonde

All pity is self-pity. ~ W. H. Auden

Pity is like a swamp. The longer we stand in the muck, the more we stink. ~ Nancy Hull-Mast

It is easy to pity when once one's vanity has been tickled. ~ Willa Cather

Pity cost nothing and isn't worth nothing. ~ Josh Billings

A man who is prevented from helping by his own pity is like a man who, when he saw another blind, put out his own eyes in sorrow, instead of leading the blind. ~ Jessie Ethel Sampter

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. ~ Michelle Black

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

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

He best can pity who has felt the woe. ~ John Gay

Pity is for living, envy is for dead. ~ Mark Twain

Pity those who don't feel anything at all. ~ Sarah J. Maas

We are seldom sorry for those who need and crave our pity--we reserve this for those who, by other means, make us exercise the abstract function of pity. ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald

A woman's pity often opens the door to love. ~ Henry Ward Beecher

Every deed of mercy and every act of charity and every thought of pity is like the balm of Gilead to our souls. ~ Clarence Darrow

We pity in others only those evils which we have ourselves experienced. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

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

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

Pity and friendship are two passions incompatible with each other. ~ Oliver Goldsmith

Pity makes the world soft to the weak and noble to the strong. ~ Edwin Arnold

No beast so fierce but knows some touch of pity. ~ William Shakespeare

Pity is like a knife, sometimes, and it may pierce one who employs it more shrewdly than the victim it would save. ~ Edwin Arilington Robinson

Soft pity enters an iron gate. ~ William Shakespeare

Pity and love are nearly allied. ~ Edward Counsel

Those who do not complain are never pitied. ~ Jane Austen

Pity is like eating mustard without beef. ~ Augustus John Cuthbert Hare

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

Do not scorn pity that is the gift of a gentle heart. ~ J. R. R. Tolkien

Such is the pure movement of nature prior to all reflection. Such is the force of natural pity. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

What is pity but the vice of kindness. ~ Emil Cioran

Pity Transformed. ~ Book preview