Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Pity
Of all the paths that lead to a woman’s love
Pity’s the straightest.
Beaumont and Fletcher—Knight of Malta. Act I. Sc. 1. L. 73.
Pity, some say, is the parent of future love.
Beaumont and Fletcher—Spanish Curate. Act V. Sc. 1.
Pity speaks to grief
More sweetly than a band of instruments.
Barry Cornwall—Florentine Party.
For pity melts the mind to love.
Softly sweet, in Lydian measures,
Soon he sooth’d his soul to pleasures.
War, he sung, is toil and trouble;
Honour but an empty bubble.
Dryden—Alexander’s Feast. L. 96.
More helpful than all wisdom is one draught of simple human pity that will not forsake us.
George Eliot—Mill on the Floss. Bk. VII. Ch. I.
Taught by that Power that pities me,
I learn to pity them.
Goldsmith—Hermit. St. 6.
La plaincte et la commiseration sont meslees à quelque estimation de la chose qu’on plaind.
Pity and commiseration are mixed with some regard for the thing which one pities.
Montaigne—Essays. Bk. I. Ch. L.
At length some pity warm’d the master’s breast
(’Twas then, his threshold first receiv’d a guest),
Slow creaking turns the door with jealous care,
And half he welcomes in the shivering pair.
Parnell—The Hermit. L. 97.
O God, show compassion on the wicked.
The virtuous have already been blessed by Thee in being virtuous.
Prayer of a Persian Dervish.
My pity hath been balm to heal their wounds,
My mildness hath allay’d their swelling griefs.
Henry VI. Pt. III. Act IV. Sc. 8. L. 41.
My friend, I spy some pity in thy looks;
O, if thine eye be not a flatterer,
Come thou on my side, and entreat for me,
As you would beg, were you in my distress:
A begging prince what beggar pities not?
Richard III. Act I. Sc. 4. L. 270.
Tear-falling pity dwells not in his eye.
Richard III. Act IV. Sc. 2. L. 66.
I shall despair. There is no creature loves me;
And if I die, no soul shall pity me:
Nay, wherefore should they, since that I myself
Find in myself no pity to myself?
Richard III. Act V. Sc. 3. L. 200.
Is there no pity sitting in the clouds,
That sees into the bottom of my grief?
Romeo and Juliet. Act III. Sc. 5. L. 198.
But, I perceive,
Men must learn now with pity to dispense;
For policy sits above conscience.
Timon of Athens. Act III. Sc. 2. L. 92.
Pity is the virtue of the law,
And none but tyrants use it cruelly.
Timon of Athens. Act III. Sc. 5. L. 8.
Soft pity never leaves the gentle breast
Where love has been received a welcome guest.
R. B. Sheridan—The Duenna. Act II.
Pity’s akin to love; and every thought
Of that soft kind is welcome to my soul.
Thos. Southerne—Oroonoko. Act II. Sc. 2. L. 64.