Martha Graham Quotes

There are two sorts of pity: one is a balm and the other a poison; the first is realized by our friends, the last by our enemies.

Pity makes suffering contagious.

To a sensitive being, pity is not seldom pain.

Pity is cruel. Pity destroys.

Kind pity chokes my spleen.

Pity speaks to grief More sweetly than a band of instruments.

The dew of compassion is a tear.

Only the artists interest me whose hearts beat in unison with the poignant misery of the world. If you have not felt that, you have not lived. Pity is essential.

Sympathy for victims is always counter-balanced by an equal and opposite feeling of resentment towards them.

However, without considering this connection, there is no doubt but that more good than evil, more delight than sorrow, arises from compassion itself; there being so many things which balance the sorrow of it.

Self-pity comes so naturally to all of us. The most solid happiness can be shaken by the compassion of a fool.

Two hurt people can not help each other. They can not.

I've never understood pity and self-pity as an emotion.

Our own sorrows seem heavy enough, even when lifted by certain long-term joys. But watching others hurt is the breaker of most any heart.

The condition of the wounded touched my heart deeply.

I never wanted anyone's pity.

… bleeding hearts

When you see a person you love being affected, suffering, people saying things that aren't true... then it hurts you.

I don't think I ever sit there and think to kick a wound harder.

Hatred is nothing but a form of cancer, and it will eat you up.

Seeing other people in pain causes me pain.

Present unhappiness is selfish; past sorrow is compassionate.

Pity aims just as little at the pleasure of others as malice at the pain of others Per-Se.

Andrew hated to see her humiliated and pathetic like this; but he half hated her too for landing herself in it, when any idiot could have seen.

Compassion does not only refine and civilize human nature, but has something in it more pleasing and agreeable, than what can be met with in such an indolent happiness, such an indifference to mankind, as that in which the stoics placed their wisdom. As love is the most delightful passion, pity is nothing else but love softened by a degree of sorrow: In short, it is a kind of pleasing anguish, anguish as well as generous sympathy, that knits mankind together, and blends them in the same common lot.