Quotes about self-pity

Shannon L. Alder -

You didn't choose God. He chose you. When you stop feeling hurt by everyone and plotting your comeback, he has some very important things he wants you to accomplish with your life.

Joan Bauer - Thwonk

It was February sixth: eight days until Valentine's Day. I was dateless, as usual, deep in the vice grip of unrequited love. It was bad enough not having a boyfriend for New Year's Eve. Now I had to cope with Valentine datelessness, feeling consummate social pressure from every retailer in America who stuck hearts and cupids in their windows by January second to rub it in.

Rita Dove - On the Bus With Rosa Parks

Against Self-PityIt gets you nowhere but deeper intoyour own shit--pure misery a luxuryone never learns to enjoy.

James C. Dobson - Life on the Edge: A Young Adult's Guide to a Meaningful Future

Even in that difficult hour when he knew death was imminent, he never indulged in self-pity. He knew intuitively that a person is only a victim if he accepts himself as one.

H. Beam Piper - Little Fuzzy

Take a drink because you pity yourself, and then the drink pities you and has a drink, and then two good drinks get together and that calls for drinks all around.

Liz Jensen - The Rapture

Hangovers are a vivid form of vengeance. Last night my apartment became the venue for a small, introverted chardonnay festival. A melancholy choir of Bulgarians provided the entertainment, via a set of headphones that ended up irredeemably tangled beneath the bed. Part of me just watched. The other part was in charge.

Nora Roberts -

It was a well-aimed arrow. Had anyone even noticed she was no longer at the library? All the people she'd worked with, worked for? All the patrons she'd helped? Had she been so replaceable that her absence hadn't caused a single ripple?Hadn't she mattered at all?

Kilroy J. Oldster - Dead Toad Scrolls

Personal disillusionment accompanied by self-pity and self-loathing are the Achilles’ heel of modern humankind, representing the weakness of the human spirit.

Marty Rubin -

How often have our own tears blinded us to the tears of others.

Charles F. Glassman - Brain Drain The Breakthrough That Will Change Your Life

12 Things To Ditch For A Great DayBlameGuiltWorryRegretResentmentEntitlementSelf-pityLazinessNegative attitudeFear of embarrassmentUrge to one-up othersYour comfort zone

Alcoholics Anonymous -

Selfishness, self-centeredness! That, we think, is the root of our troubles. Driven by a hundred forms of fear, self-delusion, self-seeking, and self-pity, we step on the toes of our fellows and they retaliate. Sometimes they hurt us, seemingly without provocation, but we invariably find that at some time in the past we have made decisions based on self which later placed us in a position to be hurt. So our troubles, we think, are basically of our own making.

Virginia Woolf - To the Lighthouse

His immense self-pity, his demand for sympathy poured and spread itself in pools at their feet, and all she did, miserable sinner that she was, was to draw her skirts a little closer round her ankles, lest she should get wet.

Caroline Blackwood - Great Granny Webster

Aunt Lavinia always had a near-religious belief that it was wicked to inflict one's personal despair on others. Any display of self-pity or self-dissatisfaction she saw as a social cruelty that was very nearly criminal.

Iain Banks - A Song of Stone

...and I confess that, like a child, I cry. Ah, self-pity; I think we are at our most honest and sincere when we feel sorry for ourselves.

Vann Chow - Shanghai Nobody

Understand that I am even ignored by the opposite sex on the internet.

Jennie Chancey -

I am not here to serve myself. I am not here to be lauded, petted, admired or ‘affirmed.’ I am here to build men, cultures and kingdoms. When I find myself in the midst of difficulties and pain, will I persevere, or will I become a coward and pity myself? We do not have time for self-pity! We have much to do, and the hour is late! We need a broader vision of home than just ourselves as wives and mothers, sisters and daughters. We need to understand that we are to work to build Christ’s kingdom—f

Kevin Malarkey - and Life beyond This World

Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow. Awareness of others is a healthy antidote to this self-focus.

Jonathan Franzen - Freedom

She had all day every day to figure out some decent and satisfying way to live, and yet all she ever seemed to get for all her choices and all her freedom was more miserable. The autobiographer is almost forced to the conclusion that she pitied herself for being so free.

Matthew Little - Hell in a Basket: A small collection of personal poems.

I'm going to Hell in a basketWeaved in from my sinsLike wickerWith little Wiccan tiesAs if I'm a witchAccused

Jennifer Clarvoe - Invisible Tender

And in the sin of wantingalways to be right, the punishmentis knowing it isn't possible.

Elizabeth Enright - Gone-Away Lake

Self-pity is the hens' besetting sin," remarked Mr. Payton. "Foolish fowl. How they came to achieve anything as perfect as the egg I do not know! I cannot fathom.

Charles Haddon Spurgeon - Based on the English Standard Version

It is well for us when prayers about our sorrows are linked with pleas concerning our sins—when, being under God's hand, we are not wholly taken up with our pain, but remember our offences against God.

Francis de Sales -

Fits of anger, vexation,and bitterness against ourselves tend to pride and they spring from no other source than self-love, which is disturbed and upset at seeing that it is imperfect.

David Brooks - The Road to Character

... there are other proud people who have low self-esteem. They feel they haven't lived up to their potential. They feel unworthy. They want to hide and disappear, to fade into the background and nurse their own hurts. We don't associate them with pride, but they are still, at root, suffering from the same disease. They are still yoking happiness to accomplishment; it's just that they are giving themselves a D- rather than an A+. They tend to be just as solipsistic, and in their own way as self-

Heather O'Neill - Lullabies for Little Criminals

I stumbled out into the street, hoping that I looked like a drunken sailor. Everything was all topsy-turvy because my eyes were filled with tears. I clutched my shoes to my chest as I went. I cried loudly, not even bothering to wipe the tears and snot off my face. I just let it all pour down, allowing everybody walking by to see what this world had done to me. If a kid my age walks down the street in her socks, crying her eyes out, then it makes it a bad neighborhood. I was glad I was making the

John Gardner -

Self pity is easily the most destructive of the non-pharmaceutical narcotics; it is addictive, gives momentary pleasure and separates the victim from reality.

Julian Barnes - The Sense of an Ending

In my terms, I settled for the realities of life, and submitted to its necessities: if this, then that, and so the years passed. In Adrian's terms, I gave up on life, gave up on examining it, took it as it came. And so, for the first time, I began to feel a more general remorse - a feeling somewhere between self-pity and self-hatred - about my whole life. All of it. I had lost the friends of my youth. I had lost the love of my wife. I had abandoned the ambitions I had entertained. I had wanted l

Miya Yamanouchi - Embrace Your Sexual Self: A Practical Guide for Women

Instead of complaining about your situation, actually do something about it. Playing "poor me" just ain't sexy.

David L. Conroy - Out of the Nightmare: Recovery from Depression and Suicidal Pain

The circles of shame are vicious. Painful feelings of shame help cause people to be depressed and suicidal, these in turn become shameful aspects of the self. Being angry does not necessarily cause more anger, being envious does not necessarily cause more envy (though once we envy, we can also envy someone's lack of envy), but, in our culture at least, shame (and envy and self-pity) are things to be ashamed about. The two common feelings of suicide are hopelessness and powerlessness; each is sha

Lailah Gifty Akita -

There is no danger than doubt.

Christopher Hitchens - Hitch-22: A Memoir

There came an awful day when I picked up the phone and knew at once, as one does with some old friends even before they speak, that it was Edward. He sounded as if he were calling from the bottom of a well. I still thank my stars that I didn't say what I nearly said, because the good professor's phone pals were used to cheering or teasing him out of bouts of pessimism and insecurity when he would sometimes say ridiculous things like: 'I hope you don't mind being disturbed by some mere wog and up

Henrietta Newton Martin -Senior Legal Consultant & Author -

Self pity is a curse , which may lead to indignant behavior., while a calm, non-competitive mind, achieves great feat. Competing with one self leads to blessing, while comparing oneself to others and then competing is a destructive path.

Tom Robbins - Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates

All depression has its roots in self-pity, and all self-pity is rooted in people taking themselves too seriously.

Max Patrick -

Stop bitching about everybody else and what they’ve done to you and start cleaning up your own shit yourself. The only person who can make you a victim is you.

G.R. Gopinath -

Sorrow and self-pity consume enormous quantities of energy. If you only can desist from feeling victimized by fate and look for a new solution instead, not only would you conserve old energies but at the same time also feel the surge of the new. New hope is kindled in the process.

Kilroy J. Oldster - Dead Toad Scrolls

Self-deception and vanity are grievous sin. The ego is the cause of all human suffering. We suffer from life only when we fail to examine the cause of our sorrow. Letting go of destructive illusions and freeing oneself from egotism of self-pity enables a person to sense the rich intertexture of their inner world, which is the only facet of reality that we exercise exclusive dominion and control.

Joseph Caldwell - The Pig Did It

Today, Aaron decided, he would begin to grieve in earnest. He would walk the lonely beach, mocked by gulls, uncaring, his every step a stately rebuke to the malign forces that had blighted his fate. His was the tragedy of a man who couldn't have his own way, and he intended to make known his anguish in the solemn solitude that only a stretch of sand, a suspiring sea, and a beetling cliff could provide.

T.F. Hodge - From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph Over Death and Conscious Encounters with "The Divine Presence"

The solution to self-pity is found in the labor of selfless giving to others.

Paul Monette -

Self pity becomes your oxygen. But you learned to breathe it without a gasp. So, nobody even notices you're hurting.

Sebastian Horsley -

Self-pity is the most destructive of all narcotics.

Miranda Marrott -

I choose to live by choice, not by chance; to make changes, not excuses; to be motivated, not manipulated; to be useful, not used; to excel, not to compete. I choose self-esteem, not self-pity. I choose to listen to my inner voice, not the random opinion of others. I choose to be me.

Crystal Mary Lindsey -

In times of suffering, don't turn inward to self-pity or outward to revenge, but turn to the lover of your soul, Jesus.

George Eliot - Adam Bede

Her own misery filled her heart—there was no room in it for other people's sorrow.

Joseph von Eichendorff - Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts

And the world suddenly appeared to me as such an awfully large place, with I so totally alone in it that I could have cried from the bottom of my heart.

Mitch Albom - The Five People You Meet in Heaven - Meniti Bianglala

The only time we waste is the time we spend thinking we are alone.

Joan Bauer -

It was bad enough not having a boyfriend for New Year's Eve. Now I had to cope with Valentine datelessness, feeling consummate social pressure from every retailer in America who stuck hearts and cupids on their windows by January second to rub it in. (Thwonk)

Colleen Truscott Fry -

It's my opinion, with some people, just knowing they are alone, living inside of their own miserable, self hating, dysfunctional mind, with their own immature, insecure, self pitying self is its own revenge. Their existence is their karma.

Eckhart Tolle -

I don't want it to end, and so, as every therapist knows, the ego does not want an end to its “problems” because they are part of its identity. If no one will listen to my sad story, I can tell it to myself in my head, over and over, and feel sorry for myself, and so have an identity as someone who is being treated unfairly by life or other people, fate or God. It gives definition to my self-image, makes me into someone, and that is all that matters to the ego.

Shannon L. Alder -

The true measure of a best friend is where they are when you “make” the biggest decision of your life, not where they were during the decision process.

Raymond E. Feist - Rage of a Demon King

All the way home, his wound pulsing with every hearbeat, he had cursed himself for a fool. How could he think she loved him? He had never been loved in his life, save perhaps by Erik and the other men who had served with him across the sea, and that was the love of comrades. He had never known the love of women, just their embrace. Twice he had found tears running down his face...

Iain M. Banks - Look to Windward

I have seen people who find that grief gives them something they never had before, and no matter how terrible and real their loss they choose to hug that awfulness to them rather than push it away.

Iain M. Banks - Look to Windward

[T]here can be a form of vanity in grief that is indulged rather than suffered.

Bamigboye Olurotimi -

No one can please a man who is not at peace with himself.

Marty Rubin -

Practically all the sadness we experience in life comes from our feeling sorry for ourselves.

Marty Rubin -

Almost all sadness comes from feeling sorry for oneself.

Renata Adler - Speedboat

Self-pity” is just sadness, I think, in the pejorative.

Paul Hoffman - The Last Four Things

Self-pity, while it should be accorded due respect, is the greatest of all acids to the human soul.

Paul Hoffman - The Last Four Things

Feeling sorry for yourself is a universal solvent of salvation.

George MacDonald - Mary Marston

It had been well if he had been left with only a wounded heart, but in that heart lay wounded pride. He hid it carefully, and the keener in consequence grew the sensitiveness, almost feminine, which no stranger could have suspected beneath the manner he wore. Under that bronzed countenance, with its firm-set mouth and powerful jaw--below that clear blue eye, and that upright easy carriage, lay a faithful heart haunted by a sense of wrong: he who is not perfect in forgiveness must be haunted thus

Betsy Byars - The Summer of the Swans

I have cried over myself a hundred times this summer, she thought, I have wept over my big feet and my skinny legs and my nose, I have even cried over my stupid shoes, and now when I have true sadness there are no tears left.

Tom Robbins - Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates

All depression has its roots in self-pity, and all self-pity is rooted in people taking themselves too seriously."At the time Switters had disputed her assertion. Even at seventeen, he was aware that depression could have chemical causes."The key word here is roots," Maestra had countered. "The roots of depression. For most people, self-awareness and self-pity blossom simultaneously in early adolescence. It's about that time that we start viewing the world as something other than a whoop-de-doo

Richelle E. Goodrich - Slaying Dragons

If you often feel alone, ignored, or forgotten, think about this: closing the door and locking yourself in won't change anything—literally and figuratively.

Related Quote Subjects

self-pity

sorrow