Quotes & Sayings About Pitying You

you're so afraid of everyone pitying you that you'd rather nurture their contempt than accept their forgiveness"

- Stacey Michaels — Nicola Sinclair

Kitty got up to fetch a table, and, as she passed, her eyes met Levin's. She felt for him with her whole heart, the more because she was pitying him for a suffering of which she was herself the cause. "If you can forgive me, forgive me," said her eyes, "I am so happy."
"I hate them all, and you, and myself," his eyes responded, and he took up his hat. But he was not destined to escape. Just as they were arranging themselves round the table, and Levin was on the point of retiring, the old Prince came in, and, after greeting the ladies, addressed Levin. — Leo Tolstoy

How does one conquer fear, Don B.?" "One takes a frog and sews it to one's shoe," he said. "The left or the right?" Don B. gave me a pitying look. "Well, you'd look mighty funny going down the street with only one frog sewed to your shoes, wouldn't you?" he said. "One frog on each shoe. — Donald Barthelme

Let's go over the facts one more time," Josh says. "This is your first weekend away from home?"
"Yes."
"Your first weekend without parental supervision?"
"Yes."
"Your first weekend without parental supervision in Paris? And you want to spend it in your bedroom? Alone?" He and Rashmi exchange pitying glances. I look at St. Clair for help, but find him staring at me with his head tilted to the side.
"What?" I ask,irritated. "Soup on my chin? Green bean between my teeth?"
St. Clair smiles to himself. "I like your stripe," he finally says. He reaches out and touches it lightly. "You have perfect hair. — Stephanie Perkins

Kaz had been impressed with the sketches. "You think like a lockpick," he'd told Wylan. "I do not." "I mean you can see space along three axes." "I'm not a criminal," Wylan protested. Kaz had cast him an almost pitying look. "No, you're a flautist who fell in with bad company. — Leigh Bardugo

You are being self-pitying."
"I'm nearly done. You don't have much more of this to bear."
"I like you better this way."
"Crushed and broken," Gansey said. "Just the way women like 'em. — Maggie Stiefvater

He gave me a look that was almost pitying, and when he smiled it was the smile of a vengeful god. My dear Veronica, I am suprised you have not already learned
everyone has a capacity for cruelty. Not everyone gets the chance to exercise it. — Deanna Raybourn

I won't talk to you about my family and you won't talk to me about yours. Family talk is either boring or self-pitying. Or it's Gothic, like a Faulkner novel. Who needs to talk about it? It's enough to live it. — Chaim Potok

The more we have known of the really good things, the more insipid the thin lemonade of later literature becomes, sometimes almost to the point of making us sick. Do you know a work of literature written in the last, say, fifteen years that you think has any lasting quality? I don't. It is partly idle chatter, partly propaganda, partly self-pitying sentimentality, but there is no insight, no ideas, no clarity, no substance and almost always the language is bad and constrained. On this subject I am quite consciously a laudator temporis acti. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

And you, Edward? Is there something in this world for which you'd surrender your life and your soul, if need be? You need not answer - I saw in your face and in your heart, last night, as you bent over the bed. Good art, good art - both of you. I have found several sorts of good and original art in this world, enough to justify encouraging your Artist to try again. But there was so much that was bad, poorly drawn and amateurish, that I could not find it in me to approve the work as a whole until I encountered and savored this, the tragedy of human love." Cynthia looked at him wildly. "Tragedy? you say 'tragedy'?" He looked at her with eyes that were not pitying, but serenely appreciative. "What else could it be, my dear? — Robert A. Heinlein

Because we live in a world under siege," I say. "Life sucks for mages and magicians- you taught me that. Bad things happen to those of us who get involved, but if we didn't fight, we'd be in an even worse state. None of it it's your fault, any more than it's the fault of the moon or the stars."
Dervish nods slowly, then arches an eyebrow "The moon or the stars?"
"I always get poetic when I'm dealing with self-pitying simpletons. — Darren Shan

Refraining from all evil, not clinging to birth and death, working in deep compassion for all sentient beings, respecting those over you and pitying those below you, without any detesting or desiring, worrying or lamentation - this is what is called Buddha. Do not search beyond it. — Dogen

I've been sitting here and thinking about God. I don't think I believe in God any more. It is not only me, I think of all the millions who must have lived like this in the war. The Anne Franks. And back through history. What I feel I know now is that God doesn't intervene. He lets us suffer. If you pray for liberty then you may get relief just because you pray, or because things happen anyhow which bring you liberty. But God can't hear. There's nothing human like hearing or seeing or pitying or helping about him. I mean perhaps God has created the world and the fundamental laws of matter and evolution. But he can't care about the individuals. He's planned it so some individuals are happy, some sad, some lucky, some not. Who is sad, who is not, he doesn't know, and he doesn't care. So he doesn't exist, really. — John Fowles

If, instead, you find yourself often pitying someone who consistently hurts you or other people, and who actively campaigns for your sympathy, the chances are close to 100 percent that you are dealing with a sociopath. — Martha Stout

The only way to heal yourself was to understand. Understand the love or the hate or the cowardice, or the impulsiveness, the lack of will of the one who hurt you
the circumstances that twisted them, the influences that warped them. And when you forgot yourself and saw the others with pitying comprehension, saw their tortured motives, a white, healing peace descended upon you. Your betrayal became an impersonal one, like a bridge giving way when you crossed it, lightning, a motor collision
you were in the way and you were damaged
that was all. It wasn't meant for you. When you understood, you were released into a new freedom and wisdom. — Mary Schumann

Just spunk won't be enough; you've got to have gumption. You've got to bear it in mind that nobody that ever lived is specially privileged; the axe can fall at any moment, on any neck, without any warning or any regard for justice. You've got to keep your mind off of pitying your own rotten luck and setting up any kind of howl about it. You've got to remember that things as bad as this and a hell of a lot worse have happened to millions of people before and that they've come through it and you can too. You'll bear it because there isn't any choice
except to go to pieces ... It's kind of a test, Mary, and it's the only kind that amounts to anything. When something rotten like this happens. Then you have your choice. You start to really be alive, or you start to die. That's all. — James Agee

Be happy when you are blamed and accused wrongly, for then you have the chance to see all the bitter, hostile or self-pitying responses that your sinful soul wants to spew out - as if these puny things could in any way defend you! Watch and see if any of these poisons come out of you when your spirit is pricked by an accusation. Only then can you see yourself as you are, and confess thy sin that is within you and forsake yourself again into the Lord's care. — Teresa Of Avila

What do you think that fish is?' Sam asked Astrid.
She peered closely at the alleged fish. 'I think that's an example of Pesce inedibilis,' she said.
'Yeah?' Sam made a face. 'Do you think it's okay to eat?'
Astrid sighed theatrically. 'Pesce inedibilis? Inedible? Joke, duh. Try to keep up, Sam, I made that really easy for you.'
Sam smiled. 'You know, a real genius would have known I wouldn't get it. Ergo, you are not a real genius. Hah. That's right. I threw down an 'ergo.'
She gave him a pitying look. 'That's very impressive, Sam. Especially from a boy who has twenty-two different uses for the word 'dude. — Michael Grant

If people ever look down upon you for crying for fictional characters, you should give them a gentle, pitying look and feel bad for them. If they've never cried for a fictional character, then they've never loved one (and what a joy that is). If they've never cried at a book, a movie, a piece of music, then they've missed one of the great pleasures life has to offer. Just because fiction does not contain things that are real doesn't mean it doesn't contain truth, and we find it through the alchemy of our tears. — Cassandra Clare

You're not messing about in Iain's garden, are you?" I felt irrationally guilty. "I just pulled a few weeds." "I warned her," Vivien said, in self-defense, "but she didn't listen." "Well," Geoff gave me a faintly pitying look, "what's done is done. We'll make sure you have a proper funeral, at any rate. — Susanna Kearsley

Demon pox, oh demon pox
Just how is it acquired?
One must go down to the bad part of town
Until one is very tired.
Demon pox, oh demon pox, I had it all along
Not the pox, you foolish blocks,
I mean this very song
For I was right, and you were wrong!"
"Will!" Charlotte shouted over the noise, "Have you LOST YOUR MIND? CEASE THAT INFERNAL RACKET! Jem - "
Jem, rising to his feet, clapped his hands over Will's mouth. "Do you promise to be quiet?" he hissed into his friend's ear.
Will nodded, blue eyes blazing. Tessa was staring at him in amazement; they all were. She had seen Will many things - amused, bitter, condescending, angry, pitying - but never giddy before.
Jem let him go. "All right, then."
Will slid to the floor, his back against the armchair, and threw up his arms. "A demon pox on all your houses!" he announced, and yawned.
"Oh, God, weeks of pox jokes," said Jem. "We're in for it now. — Cassandra Clare

Get away from my ex-girlfriend, you moany little whinge-bag.'
Caelen took a deep breath, like he was in pain, and stood up. His voice was low, guttural. 'I was hoping I'd get the chance to kill you.'
'You won't be killing anyone, you sad little emo git.'
'You've stood in the way of our love for long enough.'
'Just listening to you makes me want to top myself, you self-pitying Paranormal Romance novel reject.'
Caelen glared. 'Stop insulting me.'
'Why? If you cry will your mascara run? — Derek Landy

Just how many sisters do you have? (Valerius)
Eight. (Tabitha)
Eight? (Valerius)
What? (Tabitha)
I'm just pitying whatever poor males lived in that house with all of you. It must have been truly frightening at least one week out of every month. (Valerius)
Was that a joke? (Tabitha)
Merely a frightening statement of fact. (Valerius) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

And what do you like to do, little man?" "I like-books," James had said. While standing in the bookshop, with a parcel of books under his arm. The lady had given him a pitying look. "I read-erm-rather a lot," James went on, dreary master of the obvious. King of the obvious. Emperor of the obvious. — Cassandra Clare

I had a counter impulse to walk out of the bar and away from the Hacienda and her. She was trouble looking for somebody to happen to. And succeeding. I raised my drink and said with false cheer: 'Luck to the gold drinkers.' She sipped at hers.'You didn't say what kind of luck, good or bad. Not that it matters, people don't get their wishes. Wishing-wells are to drown in. But I mustn't go on like that. I'm always pitying myself, and that's neurotic.' She made a visible effort, and focused her attention on me: 'Speaking of luck, you don't as if you had too much luck in your life. Some of the kicks you say you go for were kicks in the head, I bet'. — Ross Macdonald

Just as it is necessary to rob your enemies of their humanity, so you have to find a way of relinquishing responsibility for the evil you are about to commit. You must define yourself as a victim. It follows that you, in committing murder, even genocide, are merely acting in self-defence. It is the victim who is responsible. This was Hitler's constant and deeply paradoxical claim. As Jeffrey Herf points out, he and his propagandists had to maintain two completely contradictory ideas: 'one rooted in the grandiose idea of a master race and world domination, the other in the self-pitying paranoia of the innocent, beleaguered victim'.23 In general, as Vamik Volkan notes, dualists tend to combine 'paradoxical feelings of omnipotence and victimization'.24 On the one hand we are masters of the universe; on the other we are the devil's slaves. — Jonathan Sacks

I believe, in general, that even people that are self-pitying, you can feel for them. — Mike White

I certainly didn't want to fight with him. I did, however, want to shout, "Listen, you son of a bitch, life isn't all a goddam football game! You won't always get the girl! Life is rejection and pain and loss" -- all those things I so cherishly cuddled in my slef-pitying bosom. I didn't, of course, say any such thing — Frederick Exley

You have been "self-pitying" for long years now and things don't seem to improve. Just try a few days of good self-esteeming" and you'll see things taking a better shape! — Israelmore Ayivor

Sometimes when they all talk I feel like shouting, 'so your life went wrong - why assume mine will? Maybe it'll work for me!' But this would only invite a pitying smile, and a 'she'll learn' comment. You can't win with them. You can't even compete. — Kate Cann

There you go, being human again,' said the Doctor. He put an arm around Rose, and hugged her to him. 'It's not fair, is it, when we're forced into pitying someone we hate. Feels lik the world's turned topsy-turvy. But it's all right. You're still allowed to hate them. As long as you don't gloat at their downfall, that's all. — Jacqueline Rayner

To the uninitiated they have merely murmured, with a pitying smile and a wave of the hand: What! are you still troubled by that? Or if compelled to be so scholastic as to labour the point they have explained, as usual, that oneself cannot be the absolute because the idea of oneself, to arise, must be contrasted with other ideas. Therefore, you cannot well have the idea of a world in which nothing appears but the idea of yourself. — George Santayana

Sooner or later, fate puts us together with all the people, one by one, who show us what we could, and shouldn't, let ourselves become. Sooner or later we meet the drunkard, the waster, the betrayer, the ruthless mind, and the hate-filled heart. But fate loads the dice, of course, because we usually find ourselves loving or pitying almost all of those people. And it's impossible to despise someone you honestly pity, and to shun someone you truly love. — Gregory David Roberts

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

I will do you one last favour, in the name and memory of the figment you have replaced. I will clarify a misapprehension of yours. Circumstances did not conspire against me. I was not led into anything, nor did I fall. I chose my life and my course. I chose to do wrong in the hope that right might come of it. I regret it. I would choose differently now. But the choice was mine. Deny that, falsify it, tinsel it over with pious, pitying justification, and you deny everything I am and every scrap of what little good I have been able to do in my life. Good or bad, give me credit for what I have done. I would rather go honestly to Hell, admitting that I leaped knowingly into error and folly, than enter into the sweetest Heaven men can dream of by whining that I had been pushed. — Steven Brust

But theoretical, imagined suffering is not what distresses a man and destroys his peace of mind. Only what you have seen with pitying eyes can really shake you. — Stefan Zweig

The look he gave me was pitying. "In age only. I told you that you didn't know the half of what Madigan had done. Well, she's the half."
"She's more than half," Denise replied dourly. "That little girl snapped my neck as soon as she saw me, then cut my throat when I got up after that, and then impaled me with a pipe she ripped off the wall when I got up after that! Needless to say, after that last one, I stayed down until Homicidal Goldilocks left. — Jeaniene Frost

The expense of making yourself panicked, enraged, and self-pitying is enormous. In time and money lost. In needless effort spent. In uncalled-for mental anguish. In sabotaging others' happiness. In foolishly frittering away potential joy during the one life - yes, the one life - you'll probably ever have. — Albert Ellis

I wish I could run away," Rudger told Jersey as they both rushed in and out of various patients' rooms, darting around like little ants. "I can't leave and be on my own though, not right now, anyway."
"Why?" asked Jersey, waving her flashlight in mid-air.
Rudger froze for a second, a regretful haze emanating from his eyes. "It'd break her heart if I left."
"Ain't that normal? For parents to have mixed feelings about their kids growin' up?"
"Not for me, it isn't."
Jersey made a pitying face in his direction. "So, you wanna keep bein' towed around with your mom, livin' in a gross town like Danvers?"
"Is there a choice?"
"Yeah, there sure is. You can run away and try to be a whole person before it's too late, or you can live with mommy dearest forever and turn into Norman Bates. — Rebecca McNutt

You don't know what is going to come to you in this world; you have to go on living and worrying. Those who die are pitying us; they are blessing us. Why should you grieve for them? — Paramahansa Yogananda

You haven't seen your father since you were eight?'
He shook his head.
'No word. No contact. No nothing?'
'Nothing.'
Daisy's eyes looked right and left before coming back to his. 'Is he alive?'
Erik turned looked into the blue-green eyes studying him so intently. He was surprised he had revealed this to someone he barely knew. Normally this was the card he kept closest to his chest. Yet something about Daisy looking at him, her expression calm and interested, sympathetic but not pitying, tactfully curious, seemed to be reaching into the tangle of emotions comprising the experience of being so cruelly deserted, and gently drawing out a thread. — Suanne Laqueur

Now that you're an adult, you might still feel a pang of guilt when you decline a dinner invitation in favor of a good book. Or maybe you like to eat alone in restaurants and could do without the pitying looks from fellow diners. Or you're told that you're "in your head too much", a phrase that's often deployed against the quiet and cerebral.
Or maybe there's another word for such people: thinkers. — Susan Cain

No," he said after a pause, "the true art of the gods is the comic. The comic is a condescension of the divine to the world of man; it is the sublime vision, which cannot be studied, but must ever be celestially granted. In the comic the gods see their own being reflected as in a mirror, and while the tragic poet is bound by strict laws, they will allow the comic artist a freedom as unlimited as their own. They do not even withhold their own existence from his sports. Jove may favor Lucianos of Samosata. As long as your mockery is in true godly taste you may mock at the gods and still remain a sound devotee. But in pitying, or condoling with your god, you deny and annihilate him, and such is the most horrible of atheisms. — Karen Blixen

Men and women, both straight and gay, who don't consider sexuality in measuring the worth of another human being. These aren't radicals or weirdos, Mama. They are shop clerks and bankers and little old ladies and people who nod and smile to you when you meet them on the bus. Their attitude is neither patronizing nor pitying. And their message is so simple: Yes, you are a person. Yes, I like you. Yes, it's all right for you to like me too. — Armistead Maupin

...grown up with very bad contemporary literature, and they find it much more fifficult to approach earlier writing than we do. The more we have known of the really good things, the more insipid the thin lemonade of later literature becomes, sometimes almost to the point of making us sick. Do you know a work of literature written in the last, say, fifteen years that you think has any lasting quality? I don't. It is partly idle chatter, partly propaganda, partly self-pitying sentimentality, but there is no insight, no ideas, no clarity, no substance and almost always the language is bad and constrained. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Helen, don't."
"I thought it was only a misunderstanding. I thought if I spoke to you directly, everything would be s-sorted out, and - " Another sob choked her. She was so consumed by emotion that she was only vaguely aware of Rhys hovering around her, reaching for her and snatching his hands back.
"No. Don't cry. For God's sake, Helen - "
"I didn't mean to push you away. I didn't know what to do. How can I make you want me again?"
She expected a jeering reply, or perhaps even a pitying one. The last thing she expected was his shaken murmur.
"I do want you, cariad. I want you too damned much."
She blinked at him through a bewildered blur, breathing in mortifying hiccups, like a child. In the next moment, he had hauled her firmly against him.
"Hush, now." His voice dropped to a deeper octave, a brush of dark velvet against her ears. "Hush, bychan, little one, my dove. Nothing is worth your tears."
"You are. — Lisa Kleypas

Are you a political prisoner, Dooley?"
Her blue eyes, immense now in her gaunt face, turned a pitying gaze on the reporter who'd asked her this. "Yes," she said. "And so are you. — Sigrid Nunez

You've got to bear it in mind that nobody that ever lived is specially privileged; the axe can fall at any moment, on any neck, without any warning or any regard for justice. You've got to keep your mind off pitying your own rotten luck and setting up any kind of a howl about it. You've got to remember that things as bad as this and a hell of a lot worse have happened to millions of people before and that they've come through it and that you will too. — James Agee

Bast brightened at the opportunity. Straightening up in his chair he looked thoughtful for a moment then said. "She had perfect ears." He made a delicate gesture with his hands. "Perfect little ears, like they were carved out of ... something." Chronicler laughed, then looked slightly taken aback, as if he'd surprised himself. "Her ears?" he asked as if he couldn't be sure if he had heard correctly. "You know how hard it is to find a pretty girl with the right sort of ears," Bast said matter-of-factly. Chronicler laughed again, seeming to find it easier the second time. "No," he said. "No, I'm sure I don't." Bast gave the story collector a deeply pitying look. "Well then, you'll just have to take my word for it. They were exceptionally fine. — Patrick Rothfuss

The heart becomes wide by forgetting self, but narrow by thinking of the self and pitying one's self. To gain a wide and broad heart you must have something before you to look upon, and to rest your intelligence upon - and that something is the God-ideal. — Hazrat Inayat Khan

To the last day of your life, be positive; try to be cheerful. Even at the very end, don't think, "I am finished." Instead of pitying yourself, you should be thinking, "O ye who are left on this desolate shore still to mourn and deplore, it is I who pity you." Death will not give you any trouble if you have a clear conscience; and if you go with this thought: "Lord, I am in Thy hands." — Paramahansa Yogananda

Benevolence does not consist in those who are prosperous pitying and helping those who are not. It consists in fellow feeling that puts you upon actually the same level with the fellow who suffers. — Woodrow Wilson

And maybe you should stop pitying yourself," he said. "Most people are lucky to have even one great love in their life. You have found two. — Cassandra Clare