* 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, in "The Fox in the Well", Fable CLVI, in Fables of Aesop (1792), as translated by Samuel Croxall

* Yet, let it not be thought that I would exclude pity from the human mind. There are scarcely any that are not, to some degree, possessed of this pleasing softness; but it is at best but a short-lived passion, and seldom affords distress more than transitory assistance; with some it scarce lasts from the first impulse till the hand can be put into the pocket…
= Oliver Goldsmith, in "On the Use of Language" in The Bee, No. 3, (20 October 1759)

 

* To show pity is felt as a sign of contempt because one has clearly ceased to be an object of fear as soon as one is pitied.
= Friedrich Nietzsche, in The Wanderer and his Shadow (1880), the third part of Human

* When you visualized a man or woman carefully, you could always begin to feel pity — that was a quality God's image carried with it. When you saw the lines at the corners of the eyes, the shape of the mouth, how the hair grew, it was impossible to hate. Hate was just a failure of imagination.
= Graham Greene, in The Power and the Glory (1940)

* Self-pity is our worst enemy and if we yield to it, we can never do anything wise in this world.
= Helen Keller, as quoted in How to Help Someone Who is Depressed, or Suicidal : Practical Suggestions from a Survivor (1993) by John Cook

* Shouldest not thou also have had compassion on thy fellowservant, even as I had pity on thee?
= Matthew 18:33 (King James Version)

* Pity makes suffering contagious.
= Friedrich Nietzsche, in The Antichrist (1888)