#pity

Between richer and poorer classes in a free country a mutually respecting antagonism is much healthier than pity on the one hand and dependence on the other, as is, perhaps, the next best thing to fraternal feeling. ↗

— Charles Horton Cooley

#best #between #classes #country #dependence

Pity is a benign form of abuse. ↗

— Michael J. Fox

#benign #form #pity

A mixture of admiration and pity is one of the surest recipes for affection. ↗

— Arthur Helps

#affection #mixture #pity #recipes #surest

There is an electric fire in human nature tending to purify - so that among these human creatures there is continually some birth of new heroism. The pity is that we must wonder at it, as we should at finding a pearl in rubbish. ↗

— John Keats

#birth #continually #creatures #electric #finding

The ones I pity are the ones who never stick out their neck for something they believe, never know the taste of moral struggle, and never have the thrill of victory. ↗

— Jonathan Kozol

#i #know #moral #neck #never

As a boy I used to go to the Chamber of Horrors at the annual fair, to look at the wax figures of Emperors and Kings, of heroes and murderers of the day. The dead now had that same unreality, which shocks without arousing pity. ↗

— Ernst Toller

#arousing #boy #chamber #day #dead

To love with the spirit is to pity, and he who pities most loves most. ↗

— Miguel de Unamuno

#loves #most #pity #spirit #to love

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

— William Butler Yeats

#heart #hid #love #pity #telling

Pitiful and pitied by no one, why have I come to the ignominy of this detestable old age, who was ruler of two kingdoms, mother of two kings? My guts are torn from me, my family is carried off and removed from me. The young king [crown prince Henry, †1183] and the count of Britanny [prince Geoffrey, †1186] sleep in dust, and their most unhappy mother is compelled to be irremediably tormented by the memory of the dead. Two sons remain to my solace, who today survive to punish me, miserable and condemned. King Richard [the Lionheart] is held in chains [in captivity with Emperor Henry VI of Germany]. His brother, John, depletes his kingdom with iron [the sword] and lays it waste with fire. In all things the Lord has turned cruel to me and attacked me with the harshness of his hand. Truly his wrath battles against me: my sons fight amongst themselves, if it is a fight where where one is restrained in chains, the other, adding sorrow to sorrow, undertakes to usurp the kingdom of the exile by cruel tyranny. Good Jesus, who will grant that you protect me in hell and hide me until your fury passes, until the arrows which are in me cease, by which my whole spirit is sucked out? ↗

— Eleanor of Aquitaine

#eleanor-of-aquitaine #fight #grief #history #john-lackland

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

#except #great #history #hot #little