Quotes & Sayings About Pity Love

And she said it was a pity, because my father was so "keen", and what did I care about?
So I said, well, I was not quite sure, but on the whole I thought I liked having everything very tidy and calm all around me, and not being bothered to do things, and laughing at the kind of joke other people didn't think at all funny, and going for country walks, and not being asked to express opinions about things (like love, and isn't so-and-so peculiar?). So then she said, oh, well, didn't I think I could try to be a little less slack, because of Father, and I said no, I was I afraid I couldn't; and after that she left me alone. But all the others still said I was no good. — Stella Gibbons

She was willing to give you everything she had. And you took it from her. You took her youth, and her beauty, and her energy and her health-" For a moment, think of his mother, Gabe couldn't continue speaking. He fell silent and choked back tears. Then he took a deep breath and went on, "- and it didn't matter. We found each other. None of it mattered but that. You won't ever know what that's like, to love someone. In a way, I pity you. But I hope you starve. — Lois Lowry

When you are in love, it means that the person you love is of great personal, selfish importance to you and to your life. If you were selfless, it would have to mean that you derive no personal pleasure or happiness from the company and the existence of the person you love, and that you are motivated only by self-sacrificial pity for that person's need of you. I don't have to point out to you that no one would be flattered by, nor would accept, a concept of that kind. Love is not self-sacrifice, but the most profound assertion of your own needs and values. It is for your own happiness that you need the person you love, and that is the greatest compliment, the greatest tribute you can pay to that person. — Ayn Rand

They love the country, and none else, who seek
For their own sake its silence and its shade.
Delights which who would leave, that has a heart
Susceptible of pity, or a mind
Cultured and capable of sober thought. — William Cowper

Oh may He look on us with love and pity and then we shall be able to do anything He wishes us to do, no matter how difficult to accomplish or painful to our feeling. — Catherine McAuley

How dare you belittle me this way?'
'What the hell are you talking about?'
'I have never, not even once in my life, given my love to another man. And you throw it back in my face like a trifle.'
'You misunderstand me. It is because I value your love so highly that I do not accept it.'
'You don't accept it because you don't want to accept it. You're mired in misplaced guilt and self-pity. — Julia Quinn

Except for the sound of the rain, on the road, on the roofs, on the umbrella, there was absolute silence: only the dying moan of the sirens continued for a moment or two to vibrate within the ear. It seemed to Scobie later that this was the ultimate border he had reached in happiness: being in darkness, alone, with the rain falling, without love or pity. — Graham Greene

It's not Love. But what fault is it of mine
if my affections do not become
Love? Very much my fault, I would say,
when I can live from day to day
on mad purity, blind pity ...
Make a scandal of meekness.
But the violence of the senses and intellect
that has confounded me for years
was the only way. — Pier Paolo Pasolini

Our poor people are great people, a very lovable people, They don't need our pity and sympathy. They need our understanding love and they need our respect. We need to tell the poor that they are somebody to us that they, too, have been created, by the same loving hand of God, to love and be loved. — Mother Teresa

If I meet the Christian Deity, I am lost: He is a tyrant and as such, is full of ideas of vengeance; His Bible speaks of nothing but fearful punishments. I never loved Him! I could never even believe that anyone did love Him sincerely. He is devoid of pity ... He will punish me in some abominable manner. — Stendhal

If we have a relationship with Jesus Christ and believe the Bible to be the Word of God, then we have no room for wallowing in the swamp of self-pity. — Lois Mowday Rabey

You said: "most days, I pity you more than I love you". I just love you. — Trista Mateer

Don't worry, Sean. You're still hot even in the hospital gown," Sandra said.

"Don't lie out of pity, Sandy. No one can look hot in these," Flora scolded. A gleam came to life in her hazel eyes. "Wait, are these the type that opens in the back? In that case would you get up and close the blinds over there for us? — Rainbowbrook

Ultimately, our obsession with celebrities isn't about them; it's about us and our needs. Many of us look at these people - who have glamour, beauty, wealth, and youth - and familiarize ourselves with them until they begin to feel like real people in our lives. We discuss them at work, in the park, and over dinner. We develop feelings for them. We love them, or hate them, or pity them, or profess not to care but secretly do. — Jake Halpern

Pity's akin to love; and every thought
Of that soft kind is welcome to my soul. — Thomas Southerne

Valentines Day is a day we celebrate real love. A love so strong that two hearts become one. Yeah, when you're happy, she's happy. And when you're angry, she's angry. And when you start wallowing in self-pity because your hotrod shop tanks and everybody's against you so you start drinking. And then she moves out and goes and lives with her parents, pfft. Or was that the day after Valentines Day? Doesn't matter. I'll go get another one just like her. — Christopher Titus

People were like dogs and this was why they took pity on them
dogs alone all the hours of their days and always waiting. Always waiting for company. Dogs who, for all of their devotion, knew only the love of one or two or three people from the beginning of their lives till the end
dogs who, once those one or two had dwindled and vanished from the rooms they lived in, were never to be known again.
You passed like a dog through those empty houses, you passed through empty rooms ... there was always the possibility of companionship but rarely the real event. For most of the hours of your life no one knew or observed you at all. You did what you thought you had to; you went on eating, sleeping, raising your voice at intruders out of a sense of duty. But all the while you were hoping, faithfully but with no evidence, that it turned out, in the end, you were a prince among men. — Lydia Millet

I wonder why love is so often equated with joy when it is everything else as well. Devastation, balm, obsession, granting and receiving excessive value, and losing it again. It is recognition, often of what you are not but might be. It sears and it heals. It is beyond pity and above law. It can seem like truth. — Florida Scott-Maxwell

I believed she'd gotten past ther hatred of me, turning to pity instead. But how could I make that into love? — Alex Flinn

...I feel pity that she will never fully understand what it is to be loved and forgiven, then loved even more." Pastel Orphans — Gemma Liviero

Now he haunts me seldom: some fierce umbilical is broken,
I live with my own fragile hopes and sudden rising despair.
Now I do not weep for my sins; I have learned to love them
And to know that they are the wounds that make love real.
His face illudes me; his voice, with its pity, does not ring in my ear.
His maxims memorized in boyhood do not make fruitless and pointless my experience.
I walk alone, but not so terrified as when he held my hand.
I do not splash in the blood of his son
nor hear the crunch of nails or thorns piercing protesting flesh.
I am a boy again
I whose boyhood was turned to manhood in a brutal myth.
Now wine is only wine with drops that do not taste of blood.
The bread I eat has too much pride for transubstantiation,
I, too
and together the bread and I embrace,
Each grateful to be what we are, each loving from our own reality. — James Kavanaugh

I spun away from him. I didn't need his pity.
I started walking in the opposite direction of the house. I didn't know where I was going, I just wanted to get away from him.
He called out, "I still love you."
I froze. And then slowly,
I turned around to look at him. "Don't say that — Jenny Han

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

To be specific, the self-sins are these: self-righteousness, self-pity, self-confidence, self-sufficiency, self-admiration, self-love and a host of others like them — A.W. Tozer

Such a pity, really; the prey falling for the predator. The victim in love with the killer ... A mere mortal girl thinking a demon was capable of love. — Charlotte Munro

I pity you Juliet. You don't know what love is. You think it's Valentine's Day, and weekends in Italy. You think it's drinking champagne in some expensive restaurant and being bought stupid bloody underwear. But that's just the trimmings. The decoration. They're just gestures. Without trust, and respect, and kindness, they don't mean shit. I thought love was about caring about someone day in and day out, about being there when it's rucking amazing and still wanting to be there when it feels like crap, I thought it was about forever. — Alexandra Potter

His heart, he said, had been the guide of his intellect." "That is just what I would fain believe. But, O Wynnie! the pity of it if that story should not be true, after all!" "Ah, my love!" I cried, "that very word makes me surer than ever that it cannot but be true. Let us go on putting it to the hardest test; let us try it until it crumbles in our hands, - try it by the touchstone of action founded on its requirements. — George MacDonald

I pause a second. He doesn't look at me the way Will, Christina, and Al sometimes do - like I am too small and too weak to be of any use, and they pity me for it. — Veronica Roth

Often it is brought home to my mind
the dark quality that Love gives me,
and pity moves me, so that frequently
I say: 'Alas! is anyone so afflicted?':
since Amor assails me suddenly,
so that life almost abandons me:
only a single spirit stays with me,
and that remains because it speaks of you.
I renew my strength, because I wish for help,
and pale like this, all my courage drained,
come to you, believing it will save me:
and if I lift my eyes to gaze at you
my heart begins to tremble so,
that from my pulse the soul departs. — Dante Alighieri

How do you generalize? War is hell, but that's not the half of it, because war is also mystery and terror and adventure and courage and discovery and holiness and pity and despair and longing and love. War is nasty; war is fun. War is thrilling; war is drudgery. War makes you a man; war makes you dead. The truths are contradictory. — Tim O'Brien

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 — William Faulkner

A pity it is evening, yet
I do love the water of this spring
seeing how clear it is, how clean;
rays of sunset gleam on it,
lighting up its ripples, making it
one with those who travel
the roads; I turn and face
the moon; sing it a song, then
listen to the sound of the wind
amongst the pines. — Li Bai

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. — Jane Austen

Suffering shapes the life force, sometimes into anger, sometimes into blame and self-pity. Eventually it may show us the wisdom of embracing and loving life. — Rachel Naomi Remen

This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth. — Steve Corbett

When I was a boy, playing at the beach, I remember a game I loved, which was an omen of my future life. I would dig a channel with high sides in the sand for the sea to fill. But when the water flooded the path I created for it with such violence that it destroyed everything in its way: my castles made of pebbles, my dikes of sand. It swept away everything, destroying it all, then disappeared, leaving me with a heavy heart, yet not daring to ask for pity, since the sea had only responded to my call. It's the same with love. You call out for it, you plan its course. The wave crashes into your heart, but it's so different from how you imagined it, so bitter and icy. — Irene Nemirovsky

Why did you come back? 'Tis not safe." "I came back to finish what we last started." Did he mean their near embrace in the barn? Before Pa came in? His mouth was warm against her ear, his fingers stroking her hair, which frayed at the touch of his callused hand. "I came back to ask you to be my wife." The words, so long wished for, were every bit as sweet as she'd hoped they'd be. But here in this shadowed corner, with Pa so ill ... "Do you love me? Or do you feel pity for me, alone, almost fatherless?" "Not pity, Morrow. Love. The love between a man and a woman." Her lips parted in a sort of wonder. "Have you ever been in love?" "Not till now ... not till you." "Then how can you be ... sure?" "I know my mind, my heart. — Laura Frantz

Love and pity and wish well to every soul in the world; dwell in love, and then you dwell in God. — William Law

I wiped my face with my napkin. "What made you want to become an actor?"
I was sure he was going to tell me something pompous like he was born to play the role. Or that he wanted to get all the woman. So I waited.
"Me." He bit his lip, but his eyes didn't meet mine. "I got sick of failing and being told I would never amount to shit back home my entire life."
I rubbed the back of my neck. This wasn't what I expected to hear.
"I've fucked up royally and I have been fucked royally." There was a tightness in his eyes, the emotion crawled up his entire body. "And no I don't want your pity."
I fidgeted in my chair. I didn't know what to say. "I understand."
Our eyes met, and for a split second Carter looked as if he was considering believing me. He blew out a noisy breath of air. "The fuck you do. — Maven West

Have pity, Lord, on those who love and are separated. — Albert Camus

A sigh or tear perhaps she'll give,
But love on pity cannot live:
Tell her that hearts for hearts were made,
And love with love is only paid,
Tell her my pains so fast increase
That soon it will be past redress;
For the wretch that speechless lies,
Attends but death to close his eyes. — John Dryden

I was so full of hate that there was no room in me for such feelings as love, pity, kindness or honor or decency, — Carl Panzram

I pity the fellow who has to create a dialect or paraphrase the dictionary to get laughs. I can't spell, but I have never stooped to spell cat with a 'k' to get at your funny bone. I love a drink, but I never encouraged drunkenness by harping on its alleged funny side. — Mark Twain

If the spark doesn't come, that's a pity; but we do not read the classics out of duty or respect, but only out of love. — Italo Calvino

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.' These men without possessions or power, these strangers on Earth, these sinners, these followers of Jesus, have in their life with him renounced their own dignity, for they are merciful. As if their own needs and their own distress were not enough, they take upon themselves the distress and humiliation of others. They have an irresistible love for the down-trodden, the sick, the wretched, the wronged, the outcast and all who are tortured with anxiety. They go out and seek all who are enmeshed in the toils of sin and guilt. No distress is too great, no sin too appalling for their pity. If any man falls into disgrace, the merciful will sacrifice their own honour to shield him, and take his shame upon themselves. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

My sister Emily first declined. The details of her illness are deep-branded in my memory, but to dwell on them, either in thought or narrative, is not in my power. Never in all her life had she lingered over any task that lay before her, and she did not linger now. She sank rapidly. She made haste to leave us. Yet, while physically she perished, mentally, she grew stronger than we had yet known her. Day by day, when I saw with what a front she met suffering, I looked on her with anguish of wonder and love. I have seen nothing like it; but, indeed, I have never seen her parallel in anything. Stronger than a man, simpler than a child, her nature stood alone. The awful point was, that, while full of ruth for others, on herself she had no pity; the spirit inexorable to the flesh; from the trembling hand, the unnerved limbs, the faded eyes, the same service exacted as they had rendered in health. To stand by and witness this, and not dare to remonstrate, was pain no words can render. — Charlotte Bronte

It was one lesson he never forgot.You don't sit back when you or a loved one is being assaulted.And you don't act like the goverment with their "proportional responses" and all that nonsense.If someone hurts you,mercy and pity must be put aside,You eliminate the enemy.You scorch the earth. — Harlan Coben

yet she could not resist sometimes yielding to the charm of a woman, not a girl, of a woman confessing, as to her they often did, some scrape, some folly. And whether it was pity, or their beauty, or that she was older, or some accident-like a faint scent, or a violin next door (so strange is the power of sounds at certain moments), she did undoubtedly then feel what men felt. — Virginia Woolf

On the day Contessa Carolina Fantoni was married, only one other living person knew that she was going blind, and he was not her groom.
This was not because she had failed to warn them.
"I am going blind," she had blurted to her mother, in the welcome dimness of the family coach, her eyes still bright with tears from the searing winter sun. By this time, her peripheral vision was already gone. Carolina could feel her mother take her hand, but she had to turn to see her face. When she did, her mother kissed her, her own eyes full of pity.
"I have been in love, too," she said, and looked away. — Carey Wallace

A Native American wisdom story tells of an old Cherokee who is teaching his grandson about life. "A fight is going on inside me," he said to the boy. "It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil - he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego. The other is good - he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you - and inside every other person, too." The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, "Which wolf will win?" The old Cherokee simply replied, "The one you feed. — Kristin Neff

I have spent twenty years trying to understand the look in her eyes. Was it love or hatred, contempt or pity, bewilderment or understanding? I shall never know. — Frederick Forsyth

Maybe, the lesson we can all learn from the inner sadness of a Narcissist is to see through our own fabrications, our own illusions so that we can be set free to be real once more. — Shannon L. Alder

A little child, a limber elf,
Singing, dancing to itself,
A fairy thing with red round cheeks,
That always finds, and never seeks,
Makes such a vision to the sight
As fills a father's eyes with light ;
And pleasures flow in so thick and fast
Upon his heart, that he at last
Must needs express his love's excess
With words of unmeant bitterness.
Perhaps 'tis pretty to force together
Thoughts so all unlike each other ;
To mutter and mock a broken charm,
To dally with wrong that does no harm.
Perhaps 'tis tender too and pretty
At each wild word to feel within
A sweet recoil of love and pity.
And what, if in a world of sin
(O sorrow and shame should this be true !)
Such giddiness of heart and brain
Comes seldom save from rage and pain,
So talks as it's most used to do. — James Gillman

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

Thus spoke the devil to me once: "God too has his hell: it is his love of man." ... And most recently I heard him speak this word: "God is dead: God died of his pity for man." - On the Pitying — Friedrich Nietzsche

Perhaps we do not yet know what the word "to love" means. There are within us lives in which we love unconsciously. To love thus means more than to have pity, to make inner sacrifices, to be anxious to help and give happiness; it is a thing that lies a thousand fathoms deeper, where our softest, swiftest, strongest words cannot reach it. At moments we might believe it to be a recollection, furtive but excessively keen, of great primitive unity. There is in this love a force that nothing can resist. — Maurice Maeterlinck

From looking at your neighbor and realizing his true significance, and that he will die, pity and compassion will arise in you for him and finally you will love him. — G.I. Gurdjieff

this is all you have, I pity you. Your ploys may have hurt the man I love, but that is not all that I have. Even if you succeed in placing these ballrooms beyond my reach, you will never ruin — Kristi Ann Hunter

Nothing but real love
(how rare it is; has one human heart in a million ever known it?) nothing but real love can repay us for the loss of freedom
the cares and fears of poverty
the cold pity of the world that we both despise and respect. — Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

Through heaven and earth
God's will moves freely, and I follow it,
As color follows light. He overflows
The firmamental walls with deity,
Therefore with love; His lightnings go abroad,
His pity may do so, His angels must,
Whene'er He gives them charges. — Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Old hands soil, it seems, whatever they caress, but they too have their beauty when they are joined in prayer. Young hands were made for caresses and the sheathing of love. It is a pity to make them join too soon. — Andre Gide

In America, even the critics - which is a pity - tend to genre-ize things. They have a hard time when genres get mixed. They want to categorize things. That's why I love Wes Anderson's films and the Coen Brothers, because you don't know what you're going to get, and very often you get something that you don't expect and that's just what a genre's not supposed to do. — Francis Ford Coppola

The sacred rowan is a woman born long, long ago, a woman whose refusal to see love cost first her lover's life, then the lives of her family, her clan, her people.
But not her own life. Not quite.
In pity and punishment she was turned into an undying tree, a rowan that weeps only in the presence of transcendent love; and the tears of the rowan are blossoms that confer extraordinary grace upon those who can see them.
When enough tears are wept, the rowan will be free. She waits inside a sacred ring that can be neither weighed or measured nor touched. She waits for love that is worth her tears.
The rowan is waiting still. — Elizabeth Lowell

He nodded. "Okay. We got it out in the open. Here it is. This is your moment to be angry at your own laziness and wallow in self-pity. A moment is all you get, because any minute Adam Pierce might set Houston on fire. Take a few minutes for your pity party. Would five be enough?"
"You're an asshole."
"Yes, but I'm a very well-trained asshole. I'm offering you the use of my expertise. So suck it up, get over this bump, and let's go. Are you with me?"
You know what? No: if he ever fell in love, it wouldn't be great romantic devotion. It would be an exercise in frustration and lust, and at the end of it his significant other would strangle him. — Ilona Andrews

These fellow-mortals, every one, must be accepted as they are: you can neither straighten their noses, nor brighten their wit, nor rectify their dispositions; and it is these people
amongst whom your life is passed
that it is needful you should tolerate, pity, and love: it is these more or less ugly, stupid, inconsistent people, whose movements of goodness you should be able to admire
for whom you should cherish all possible hopes, all possible patience. — George Eliot

I do not love thee less for what is done,
And cannot be undone. Thy very weakness
Hath brought thee nearer to me, and henceforth
My love will have a sense of pity in it,
Making it less a worship than before. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The real test of love is loving those who we feel are the hardest ones to love. — Criss Jami

Pity, Jane, from some people is a noxious and insulting sort of tribute, which one is justified in hurling back in the teeth of those who offer it; but that is the sort of pity native to callous, selfish hearts; it is a hybrid, egotistical pain at hearing of woes, crossed with ignorant contempt for those who have endured them. But that is not your pity, Jane; it is not the feeling of which your whole face is full at this moment - with which your eyes are now almost overflowing - with which your heart is heaving - with which your hand is trembling in mine. Your pity, my darling, is the suffering mother of love: its anguish is the very natal pang of the divine passion. I accept it, Jane; let the daughter have free advent - my arms wait to receive her. — Charlotte Bronte

Love was not the point and pity was a poor man's pride. — Holly Lynn Payne

When Love cast me out, it was Cruelty who took pity upon me — Jacqueline Carey

I pity the woman who will love you
when I am done. She will show up
to your first date with a dustpan
and broom, ready to pick up all the pieces
I left you in. She will hear my name so often
it will begin to dig holes in her. That
is where doubt will grow. She will look
at your neck, your thin hips, your mouth,
wondering at the way I touched you.
She will make you all the promises I did
and some I never could. She will hear only
the terrible stories. How I drank. How I lied.
She will wonder (as I have) how someone
as wonderful as you could love a monster
like the woman who came before her. Still,
she will compete with my ghost.
She will understand why you do not look
in the back of closets. Why you are afraid
of what's under the bed. She will know
every corner of you is haunted
by me. — Clementine Von Radics

Nefret had always had an uncanny ability to read his thoughts. 'Did she cry?' she asked sweetly. 'And then you kissed her? You shouldn't have done that. I'm sure you meant well, but kissing someone out of pity is always a mistake. — Elizabeth Peters

Rich or poor, victors or vanquished, I make no allowance for any of them. I don't want love or hate, pity or anger. Sympathy is another matter. There is never enough of that. — Gustave Flaubert

Fits of anger, vexation,and bitterness against ourselves tend to pride and they spring from no other source than self-love, which is disturbed and upset at seeing that it is imperfect. — Francis De Sales

Zeal is that pure and heavenly flame,The fire of love supplies ;While that which often bears the name,Is self in a disguise.True zeal is merciful and mild,Can pity and forbear ;The false is headstrong, fierce and wild,And breathes revenge and war. — John Newton

There is no creature loves me;
And if I die, no soul will pity me. — William Shakespeare

What stories can do, I guess, is make things present.
I can look at things I never looked at. I can attach faces to grief and love and pity and God. I can be brave. I can make myself feel again. — Tim O'Brien

For Mercy has a human heart
Pity, a human face:
And Love, the human form divine,
And Peace, the human dress. — William Blake

Edith's clothes were flung in disarray on the floor beside the bed, the covers of which had been thrown back carelessly; she lay naked and glistening under the light on the white unwrinkled sheet. Her body was lax and wanton in its naked sprawl, and it shone like pale gold. William came nearer the bed. She was fast asleep, but in a trick of the light her slightly opened mouth seemed to shape the soundless words of passion and love. He stood looking at her for a long time. He felt a distant pity and reluctant friendship and familiar respect; and he felt also a weary sadness, for he knew that he would never again be moved as he had once been moved by her presence. The sadness lessened, and he covered her gently, turned out the light, and got in bed beside her. — John Edward Williams

Some things were not possible in this world. Children did not have two parents who refused to love them. One, maybe, but for pity's sake, not two. — Sue Monk Kidd

The nobleman fell to his knees. 'Sir, come down to my son ere he die.'
His old face. His love for his son.
None of us spoke, the old man kneeling so.
I watched your eyes. The pity that pooled, this love of the father.
'Go thy way; thy son lives,' you said.
And he raised his face to you, and we could see that he believed. — Niall Williams

Not so on Man; him through their malice fall'n,
Father of Mercy and Grace, thou didst not doom
So strictly, but much more to pity incline:
No sooner did thy dear and only Son
Perceive thee purpos'd not to doom frail Man
So strictly, but much more to pity inclin'd,
He to appease thy wrath, and end the strife
Of mercy and Justice in thy face discern'd,
Regardless of the Bliss wherein hee sat
Second to thee, offer'd himself to die
For man's offence. O unexampl'd love,
Love nowhere to be found less than Divine!
Hail Son of God, Saviour of Men, thy Name
Shall be the copious matter of my Song
Henceforth, and never shall my Harp thy praise
Forget, nor from thy Father's praise disjoin. — John Milton

I love you, Dominique. As selfishly as the fact that I exist. As selfishly as my lungs breathe air. I breathe for my own necessity, for the fuel of my body, for my survival. I've given you, not my sacrifice or my pity, but my ego and my naked need. This is the only way I can want you to love me. — Ayn Rand

The world is full of love and pity, I say. Had there been less suffering, there would have been less kindness. — William Makepeace Thackeray

In the earlier Passion it was John's special eyewitness account that gave the work its authenticity and edge, while the irregular placement of arias and chorales reinforced this suspense. With Matthew's version comes a larger cast and the added pathos of Jesus presented as 'a man of sorrows'. It would be hard to better it as an essentially human drama - one involving immense struggle and challenge, betrayal and forgiveness, love and sacrifice, compassion and pity - the raw material with which most people can instantly identify. — John Eliot Gardiner

I know I need to face the facts, and remain strong to extricate myself from this hideous situation, but not yet. I figure I'm owed at least one day to indulge my self-pity. One day to wallow in despair. To give into the soul-crunching heart-stomping pain ripping me to shreds on the inside. — Siobhan Davis

[T]he young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.
He must learn them again. He 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 pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope and, worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands. — William Faulkner

Adieu," he said, "this is goodbye. I'll never forget you, never."
She stood silent. He looked at her and saw her eyes full of tears. He turned away.
At this moment she wasn't ashamed of loving him, because her physical desire had gone and all she felt towards him now was pity and a profound, almost maternal tenderness. She forced herself to smile. "Like the Chinese mother who sent her son off to war telling him to be careful 'because war has its dangers,' I'm asking you, if you have any feelings for me, to be as careful as possible with your life."
Because it is precious to you?" he asked nervously.
Yes. Because it is precious to me. — Irene Nemirovsky

Most of the crimes which disturb the internal peace of society are produced by the restraints which the necessary, but unequal, laws of property have imposed on the appetites of mankind, by confining to a few the possession of those objects that are coveted by many. Of all our passions and appetites, the love of power is of the most imperious and unsociable nature, since the pride of one man requires the submission of the multitude. In the tumult of civil discord, the laws of society lose their force, and their place is seldom supplied by those of humanity. The ardor of contention, the pride of victory, the despair of success, the memory of past injuries, and the fear of future dangers, all contribute to inflame the mind, and to silence the voice of pity. From such motives almost every page of history has been stained with civil blood.... — Edward Gibbon

For man is essentially alone, and one should pity him and love him and grieve with him. — Halldor Laxness

Love doesn't care what you want. Love doesn't care if it's convenient. Love pursues its own agenda, and there's no bullet in the world that can take it down. More's the pity. — Seanan McGuire

Love does nothing but make you weak! It turns you into an object of pity and derision-a mewling pathetic creature no more fit to live than a worm squirming on the pavement after a hard summer rain. — Teresa Medeiros

But miserable most, to love unloved? This you should pity rather than despise — William Shakespeare

I remember a rainy, depressing afternoon when she remarked 'What a pity we can't make love, there's nothing else to do,' and he agreed that it was and there wasn't. — Christopher Isherwood

He was addicted to me
and now he has gone cold turkey.
He used to send me fifty texts a day.
And now he is ignoring me.
It's like I was once his Barack Obama.
And now I am John McCain,
conceding defeat like a sad-face sock puppet, knowing I have sold the best of myself.
He, my electorate,
not only does not want me,
he actively feels pity. — Emma Forrest

I love everybody and pity everybody. — Leo Tolstoy

When your fear touches someone's pain, it becomes pity, when your love touches someone's pain, it become compassion. — Stephen Levine

I ask you to try something. If someone grieves you, or dishonors you, or takes something of yours, then pray like this: "Lord, we are all your creatures. Pity your servants, and turn them to repentance," and then you will perceptibly bear grace in your soul. Induce your heart to love your enemies, and the Lord, seeing your good will, shall help you in all things, and will Himself show you experience. But whoever thinks evil of his enemies does not have love for God and has not known God. — Silouan The Athonite

That is who I want you to remember, lad. The man so filled with Arman's love that he could forgive his son for taking his life and the life of his bride. That is the man I knew. The king I served. Just you remember it.'
'But a man with many mistresses. A man who wouldn't have had that problem if he'd
'
'Aye, he was no porcelain saint. He was mixed, torn, pulled by light and darkness, as is every follower of Arman. That is what it is to know Arman and yet still live in this world. Pity those who do not know Arman, because in them there is nothing at all pulling them toward light. — Jill Williamson

Pity is love in undress. — Marie Von Ebner-Eschenbach