Self-pity

“ Don't be sorry for yourself—better smile. Worst of troubles will disperse—in a while. If self-pity mounts up high, you are bound to mope or cry, bound to amplify your trouble, make it grow in size, quite double, being sorry for oneself is out of style! Don't be sorry for yourself—better smile; blackest clouds will pass away—in a while. 'Tis true, you've been hard hit, not a friend but would admit you have cause to lose some sleep, quite a lot to make you weep. Don't you do it, though, for pity's out of style! Don't be sorry for yourself—better smile. ”

“ Pity can make the human face almost like the face of an angel; there is no emotion that is so transforming. When pride, self-will, and selfishness, resign their sway, and pity, heaven-born and god-like, dawns, all that is mean, and coarse, and earthly, seems to fade before it, to grow dumb and quiet in the calm radiance of its risen fullness. ”

“ In a world in which competition is keen, the cooperative gentle qualities hinder success. The weak seek the pity of others; they need it; and the pity-seeker is a very distinct type. The strong and proud hate to be pitied, and when wounded they hide, shun their friends and keep the semblance of strength with a brave face. Pity directed toward oneself as the object is self-pity,—a quality found in children and in a certain amiable, weak, egoistic type, whose eyes are always full of tears as they talk of themselves. ”

“ On recognizing me his silence grew profound, but an unmistakable expression of pity filled his eyes and stung me to the quick.
I have a faculty of self-pity, but my pride promptly refuses the slightest offer of sympathy from another. ”

“ I want to radiate a spirit that refuses to pity itself for any of its woes, its afflictions, its misfortunes, its sorrows. There is no weakness so weak as the weakness of self-pity; there is nothing so spiritually debilitating as to brood over one's own sorrows. It is a kind of melancholy selfishness; it neither helps one's self nor others ”

“ And so I’ll let myself write out my feelings—and perhaps get rid of some of the silly self-pity I’m foolish enough to feel, instead of going about choked up with it. How queer it is that even when we keep our thoughts respectable we can’t help having absurd feelings like self-pity, even though we know how rotten stupid they are! ”

“ There seems to be in undeveloped human nature something that really enjoys being pitied, and if we cannot get the commiseration of other people, we can, without much trouble, work up a case of self-pity. Most of us would have to acknowledge that we seldom find tears in our eyes except when our own woes are under consideration. "Whatever else the blues accomplish, they certainly afford us a chance to submerge ourselves in a sea of self-engrossment." [63]
[63] Putnam: Human Motives. ”

“ If disappointment comes, it may be necessary for us to repress our feelings of dissatisfaction. If we begin pitying ourselves and saying, “Oh, it is too bad! it is just too bad!” we shall only feel the more keenly the hurt; and the more we cultivate the habit of self-pity, the more power it exercises over us. Some people have so yielded to the power of self-pity that whole days are darkened by little trifling disappointments that they ought to throw off in a few minutes. Nine tenths of the suffering that comes from disappointment has its root in self-pity. You have better qualities in you ”

“ There is always a danger, however, of its arousing in its object that self-pity which is so eminently unlovely and which has so often the direct tendency to increase rather than decrease whatever painful conditions are present. ”

“ Self-pity is ever a serious hamperer of resistive vitality.
A great many things in modern life have distinctly encouraged this practice of self-pity and conscious commiseration of one's state until it has become almost a commonplace of modern life for those who feel that they are suffering, especially if they belong to what may be called the sophisticated classes. ”

“ The essence of pity is thus a need for self-abasement, an aspiration downwards. This painful aspiration nevertheless has a charm about it, because it raises us in our own estimation and makes us feel superior to those sensuous goods from which our thought is temporarily detached. The increasing intensity of pity thus consists in a qualitative progress, in a transition from repugnance to fear, from fear to sympathy, and from sympathy itself to humility. ”

“ Instead of realizing how much better off they are than the great majority of people—for most of the typical self-pitiers are not real subjects for pity—they keep looking at those whom they fondly suppose to be happier than themselves and then proceed to get into a mood of commiseration with themselves because of their ill health—real or imaginary—or uncomfortable surroundings. ”

“ In certain natures the extreme of self-pity is intolerable, and leads to self-destruction; but there are less fortunate beings whom the vehemence of their revolt against fate strengthens to endure in suffering. ”

“ Useful it certainly will be, but all said and done I fancy that some residue of regret will be apt to remain, and that because of it women will be tempted to indulge in self-pity. And self-pity both for men and women is the most enervating of all emotional luxuries. ”

“ This proved an antidote to that sympathy-seeking self-pity which is not only so fatal to character development, but which actually makes the trials and sufferings of life harder to bear than they would otherwise be and will sometimes lift the little discomforts that are almost inevitably associated with living up to a plane of superconsciousness on which they seem to be torments. ”

“ She put a firm hand on herself, as she was wont to do in these days, when there was no time for brooding on her own troubles, and when, with the duties she had taken upon herself, it would be criminal to indulge in self-pity. ”

“ You surely would not ask a friend to have pain with you, or share with you the gall of bitter, experiences through which you have lived. Therefore, if you are the victim of self-pity and if your own past sufferings discolor your every pleasant thought, at least do not taint the minds of your friends. ”

“ What, then, if love in pity had so rallied this stricken life as to lead it to regard itself as a persecuted thing—a thing privileged, through its own helplessness, to presume on the self-sacrifices of others for its sake? ”

“ All Nature seems convulsed within him! and, in the Midst of his Self-torture, his only Thoughts are, whether he shall ruin, or be ruined; murder, or be murdered! But if we go farther, and behold this Man in the Action he has so eagerly sought for, or carry our Ideas to the Consequences of it, we must tremble with Pity. ”

“ What enabled me to conquer, was not so much heroism as a susceptibility to nobler joys, and the difficulty which a man must encounter who is not susceptible to them must be enormous and almost insuperable. Pity, profound pity, is his due, and especially if he happen to possess a nervous, emotional organisation. If we want to make men water-drinkers, we must first of all awaken in them a capacity for being tempted by delights which water-drinking intensifies. The mere preaching of self-denial will do little or no good. ”

“ The word self infects them with a fixed introversion and isolation. It implies that the act of love or trust or control is turned back upon a self which already is in full existence and in whose behalf the act operates. Pity fulfils and creates a self when it is directed outward, opening the mind to new contacts and receptions. Pity for self withdraws the mind back into itself, rendering its subject unable to learn from the buffetings of fortune. ”

“ Pity was good once, because it was feeling, and feeling is the root of all understanding and sympathy. But self-torturing pity seems to me a weakness. Sympathy is quite a different, a stronger, a braver thing. ”

“ Or rather to admire One's Self as he was, without consciousness of the mean vice of egotism, because of the pity almost bordering on contempt with which One regards One's Self as he is, shrivelled up into a sort of shrimp of a man—or blown out into a flounder. ”

“ So a man striking himself or his friend by a convulsive motion of his arm, no body thinks he has in this liberty, every one pities him as acting by necessity and constraint.’
Here I will just stop to observe that the stanch sticklers for necessity, who make up by an excess of zeal for their want of knowledge, would read this passage with a smile of self-complacent contempt, and remark profoundly that whether the man struck his friend on purpose, or from a convulsive motion, he was equally under necessity, and the object of pity. ”

“ By inherited traits, and indiscreet treatment, self-love had early become so excessive that only severest discipline could transmute it to disinterestedness. Pity for her own misfortunes had, indeed, taught her to curb her youthful scorn for mediocrity, and filled her with considerateness and delicate sensibility. ”

“ Hazlitt, who boldly says all he feels, avows that not only he does not pity sick people, but he hates them. I obscurely recognize his meaning. Pain is probably too selfish a consideration, too simply a consideration of self-attention. We pity poverty, loss of friends, etc.,—more complex things, in which the sufferer's feelings are associated with others. ”

“ Moreover, once the tender spot of pity touched, a self-ignoring energy of helpfulness and desire to benefit arose, which was at once the most beautiful and the least fully understood trait in his character. It is difficult for many to understand a passion for unselfishness. ”

“ Surely if pity does discover for us any illusion in selfishness, then it must be a particular form of pity to which this function belongs. For much of pity simply illustrates this illusion. We cannot then do better than first to distinguish the selfish from the altruistic forms of what we popularly include under the one name Pity, or, to use the more general word, Sympathy. We shall have to go over old and commonplace ground, but we need to; for the illusion of selfishness, to be detected, needs also to be illustrated. ”

“ For I put myself in his place—not outwardly only, as people generally do, fancying themselves in another person’s physical place with their own souls, their own wishes, habitudes, &c.—but inwardly—in his mind, his youth, wishes, sufferings, thoughts.
“‘Poor Piqueur,’ I said, as I went down-stairs; ‘I have no more satiric pleasure now over your gnawing suspicion, your errors, your self-shooting covetousness, your hungry avarice. You have got to live through a long eternity with that self, that “me” of yours, the best way you can, just as I have with mine. ”

“ I wonder why I paint myself in such horrid colours—why have I this morbid pleasure in pretending to those I love that I am a beast and a cynic? I suffer, I suppose, from a lacerated self-esteem, from a painful loneliness, from the consciousness of how ridiculous I have made myself, and that most people if they knew would regard me with loathing and disgust. ”

“ There is always, you know, a secret satisfaction in the soul of him who pities. He does hug himself, and whether he does it consciously or unconsciously depends on his aptitude for clear self-criticism. ”

“ The truth is that in our pity—I mean by this what we erroneously call “pity”—we no longer think consciously of ourselves, but quite unconsciously, exactly as when slipping we unconsciously make the best counter-motions possible in order to recover our balance, and in doing so clearly use all our intelligence. A mishap to another offends us; it would bring our impotence, or perhaps our cowardice, into strong relief if we could do nothing to help him; or in itself it would give rise to a diminution of our honour in the eyes of others and of ourselves. ”

“ I have attacks of virtue, I know not why,—moments, when suddenly everything overpowers me, my youth, my life of to-day, my life of to-morrow, and I feel only an infinite pity for myself, and nothing else. ”

“ Don't think them heartless; they are neither better nor worse than you or I; they get over their professional horrors, and into their proper work; and in them pity, as an EMOTION, ending in itself or at best in tears and a long-drawn breath, lessens,—while pity, as a MOTIVE, is quickened, and gains power and purpose. It is well for poor human nature that it is so. ”

“ Would you wean a man from sensual excesses by the inevitable consequences to which they lead?—What holds more antipathy to pleasure than pain? The mind given up to self-indulgence revolts at suffering, and throws it from it as an unaccountable anomaly, as a piece of injustice when it comes. ”

“ It is pretended, then, that in wishing to relieve the distresses of others we only desire to remove the uneasiness which pity creates in our mind; that all our actions are unavoidably selfish, as they all arise from the feeling of pleasure or pain existing in the mind of the individual, and that whether we intend our own good or that of others, the immediate gratification connected with the idea of any object is the sole motive which determines us to the pursuit of it. ”

“ To cease thinking of oneself.—Let us thoroughly revolve in our minds the reason why we jump after a person who, before our eyes, falls into the water, though we do not in the least care for him. For pity's sake we only think of him—so says thoughtlessness. Why do we feel pain and discomfort about somebody spitting blood, though we may be adversely and ill-disposed towards him: From pity; we cease to think of ourselves, —so says again thoughtlessness. ”

“ He saw all this; and for a time he came out of himself, out of his selfishness—out of the constant preoccupation of his interests and his desires—out of the temple of self and the concentration of personal thought. ”