Quotessence
Home / Topics / Pathetic Quotes

Pathetic Quotes

Browse 424 quotes about Pathetic.

Related topics

ThinkingPeopleIfsMenKnowsKindHumansTryingWorldLittlesLooksWantNeedsSaidWayDoePersonsBelieveFactsShouldLostMeanStillsYearsChildrenGivingHas BeensWeakCreaturesCryEnoughEyeSoundWellsWholeAnimalArtistCareEndsFacesFeelingsFeelsFirstsGuyMadeMindMotherSeemsSelfSometimesStuffWritingAgeBookCharacterDiesFashionFilmHopelessIdeasJobsLongMomentsTurns

Pathetic Quotes

“... the hey-day of a woman's life is on the shady side of fifty, when the vital forces heretofore expended in other ways are garnered in the brain, when their thoughts and sentiments flow out in broader channels, when philanthropy takes the place of family selfishness, and when from the depths of poverty and suffering the wail of humanity grows as pathetic to their ears as once was the cry of their own children.”

WayChildrenLife IsSufferingHumanityForceGrowsSidesBrainPovertyCryFlowEarsDepthHeySelfishnessFiftySentimentsSympathyPhilanthropyPatheticShady
Book:Elizabeth Cady Stanton: As Revealed in Her Letters & Diary (Abridged)
Create image

“Teenage girls are extremists who see the world in black-and- white terms, missing shades of gray. Life is either marvelous or notworth living. School is either pure torment or is going fantastically. Other people are either great or horrible, and they themselves are wonderful or pathetic failures. One day a girl will refer to herself as "the goddess of social life" and the next day she'll regret that she's the "ultimate in nerdosity.”

PeopleWorldSchoolLife IsGirlNextSocialBlackTermWhiteWonderfulMissingRegretOne DayPureUltimateHorribleGrayShadeGoddessBlack And WhiteAdolescenceMarvelousTeenageNext DayTormentPatheticExtremistSocial LifeTeenage GirlShades Of Gray
Author:Mary Pipher
Create image

“A completely indifferent attitude toward clothes in women seems to me to be an admission of inferiority, of perverseness, or of alack of realization of her place in the world as a woman. Or--what is even more hopeless and pathetic--it's an admission that she has given up, that she is beaten, and refuses longer to stand up to the world.”

WorldSeemsGivenAttitudeFashionClothesRefuseAppearanceRealizationHopelessIndifferentBeatenPatheticGiven UpInferiorityPlaces In The WorldAdmissionPerverseness
Author:Hortense Odlum
Create image

“To be a social success, do not act pathetic, arrogant, or bored. Do not discuss your unhappy childhood, your visit to the dentist,the shortcomings of your cleaning woman, the state of your bowels, or your spouse's bad habits. You will be thought a paragon (or perhaps a monster) of good behavior.”

StatesSuccessSocialChildhoodHabitBehaviorMonstersUnhappyBoredArrogantSpouseCleaningPatheticEtiquetteShortcomingsBad HabitsDentistBowelsGood BehaviorParagonUnhappy Childhood
Author:Mason Cooley
Create image

“Common criticism of the Internet is that it is dominated by the crude, the uninformed, the immature, the smug, the untalented, the repetitious, the pathetic, the hostile, the deluded, the sefl-righteous, and the shrill. This criticism overlooks the fact that the Internet also offers - for the savvy individual who knows where to look - the tasteless and borderline insane.”

KnowsLooksFactsIndividualCommonInternetOffersCriticismInsaneRighteousHostilePatheticCrudeImmatureDeludedSavvyBorderlineUninformedUntalented
Author:Dave Barry
Create image

“In the popular arena, one can tell ... that the average man ... imagines that an industrious acquisition of particulars will render him a man of knowledge. With what pathetic trust does he recite his facts! He has been told that knowledge is power, and knowledge consists of a great many small things.”

MenDoeHas BeensFactsImagineAverageGreat MenImagine ThatArenaSmall ThingsPatheticAcquisitionAverage ManIndustriousKnowledge Is Power
Book:Ideas Have Consequences
Create image

“People come up to me in supermarkets and demand humour. And the less amusing I am, the more they piss themselves. So I say, "I'm doing my shopping, mate, OK?" and the guy will be on the floor in hysterics. Quite odd. Eventually I do have to say something funny so I usually go for something pathetic like, "It's a nice place to shop but I wouldn't like to live here!" and they roar again. Wet themselves. I'm lucky though that I am not massively famous, I can get the Tube without much bother. Must be awful being the Beckhams.”

PeopleI CanGuyNiceHumourLuckyDemandCome UpAwfulBotherOddShopsMatesShoppingWetPatheticAmusingTubesSupermarketsBeckham
Author:Steve Coogan
Create image

“People, especially the liberals, just live in this world where if anything is said that offends anybody even a little bit, not only does that person have to apologize; sometimes they have to go away forever. Go away, bad person. My analysis of this is that most of us don't do anything decent in our life. I'm not saying we're evil. I'm just saying we don't make a contribution, so the way they [liberals] think they're making a contribution is to point at the bad people [which] is somehow even more pathetic.”

PeopleIfsThinkingWorldWayLittlesPersonsDoeSaidSometimesEvilBitsForeverOur LivesThis WorldLittle BitAnalysisDecentContributionGoing AwayApologizingPatheticBad PeopleJust LiveJust Saying
Author:Bill Maher
Create image

“The human race may be compared to a writer. At the outset a writer has often only a vague general notion of the plan of his work, and of the thought he intends to elaborate. As he proceeds, penetrating his material, laboring to express himself fitly, he lays a firmer grasp on his thought; he finds himself. So the human race is writing its story, finding itself, discovering its own underlying purpose, revising, recasting a tale pathetic often, yet none the less sublime.”

WritingHumansMayStoriesPurposeRacePlansMaterialsFindingsLaysNotionTalesHuman RaceDiscoveringVagueSublimePatheticRevising
Book:The Standard
Create image

“I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished author, and I speak like a child.... My hemmings and hawings over the telephone cause long-distance callers to switch from their native English to pathetic French. At parties, if I attempt to entertain people with a good story, I have to go back to every other sentence for oral erasures and inserts.... In these circumstances nobody should ask me to submit to an interview if by "interview" a chat between two normal human beings is implied.”

PeopleIfsThinkingShouldWritingHumansChildrenLongTwoStoriesAsksSpeakCausesHuman BeingsPartyGeniusCircumstancesNormalAnxietyDistanceSentencesAsk MeInterviewsNativeSubmitTelephonesPatheticDistinguishedGood StoryLong DistanceImpliedSocial AnxietyInsert
Author:Vladimir Nabokov
Create image

“Property must be secured or liberty cannot exist. But if unlimited or unbalanced power of disposing property, be put into the hands of those who have no property, France will find, as we have found, the lamb committed to the custody of the world. In such a case, all the pathetic exhortations and addresses of the national assembly to the people, to respect property, will be regarded no more than the warbles of the songsters of the forest.”

PeopleIfsWorldHandsFoundPoliticsLibertyCasesEconomyPropertyCommittedForestsFranceLiberalismAddressesUnlimitedPatheticAssemblyLambsSecuredCustodyUnbalanced
Author:John Adams
Create image

“The idea of a judgment of history is secularism's vain, meaningless, hopeless, pathetic attempt to devise a substitute for what the great Abrahamic traditions of faith know is the final judgment of almighty God, who is not an impersonal force. History is not God. God is God. History is not our judge. God is our Judge.”

KnowsIdeasForceJudgingJudgmentTraditionFinalsVainHopelessSubstitutesMeaninglessAlmightyPatheticSecularismAlmighty God
Author:Robert P. George
Create image

“Time and again our best and brightest have alerted society to looming problems, but our persistent pattern has been to ignore the warnings and suffer the consequences. The pathetic refrain of recent years --'Nobody saw this coming'--is always a self-serving lie.”

YearsHas BeensSelfProblemLyingSufferingSawsConsequencePatternsServingWarningPersistentPatheticRefrainSelf ServingLooming
Book:The Ragged Edge of the World: Encounters at the Frontier Where Modernity, Wildlands and Indigenous Peoples Mee t
Create image

“Every intellectual revolution which has ever stirred humanity into greatness has been a passionate protest against inert ideas. Then, alas, with pathetic ignorance of human psychology, it has proceeded by some educational scheme to bind humanity afresh with inert ideas of its own fashioning.”

HumansHas BeensIdeasHumanityPsychologyGreatnessIgnoranceRevolutionIntellectualPassionateEducationalProtestSchemesAlasPathetic
Book:Aims of Education
Create image

“Still more pathetic is the total collapse of moral fanaticism. Fanatics think that their single-minded principles qualify them to do battle with the powers of evil; but like a bull they rush at the red cloak instead of the person who is holding it; he exhausts himself and is beaten. He gets entangled in non-essentials and falls into the trap set by cleverer people.”

PeopleThinkingPersonsStillsFallEvilMoralPrinciplesBattleEssentialsRedCollapseTrapsBeatenBullsPatheticFanaticsFanaticismCloaks
Author:Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Create image

“We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity. . . . Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words, 'Too late.' ... Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world.”

WorldLongStillsFactsTodayBeautifulOpportunityLostStruggleWrittenTomorrowCivilizationLateMy FriendsStandingBonesNakedBitterToo LateNew WorldFierceThievesProcrastinationPatheticUrgencyUnfoldingBreaking SilenceConundrumsLost OpportunityDejected
Author:Martin Luther King, Jr.
Create image

“Thanks to pathetic reporting by The New York Times and other media sycophants more than 50 years ago, Fidel Castro, following the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, was also seen by many as a liberator of Cuba. 'I am not a communist and neither is the revolutionary movement.' Castro said at the time. Only after he consolidated power, did he tell the truth: 'I am a Marxist-Leninist and I will be one until the last day of my life.'”

YearsSaidLastsMediaNew YorkMovementYears AgoFollowingThanksRevolutionaryTelling The TruthCommunistDictatorshipPatheticCubaNew York TimesLast DayMarxistCastroLiberatorsSycophants
Author:Cal Thomas
Create image

“We're not ignored by The Guinness Book Of Records, but we've been largely ignored by the media during our lifetime. If you read any article, no mention is ever made of Pink Floyd. We're never included in the same sentences as The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and The Who. I wrote 'The Wall' as an attack on stadium rock - and there's Pink Floyd making money out of it by playing it in stadiums! Pathetic. They spoiled my creations.”

IfsMadeBookRecordsRocksMediaCreationWallStonesLifetimeSentencesMaking MoneyArticlesRollingIgnoredPatheticSpoiledStadiumsRolling StonesGuinness
Author:Roger Waters
Create image

“Make your way to death row and speak with the tragic victims of criminality. As they prepare to make their pathetic walk to the electric chair, their hopeless cry is that society will not forgive. Capital punishment is society's final assertion that it will not forgive.”

WaySpeakWalksCryVictimForgivingFinalsPunishmentChairsTragicHopelessElectricPatheticAssertionCapital PunishmentCriminalityDeath RowElectric Chair
Book:A Gift of Love: Sermons from Strength to Love and Other Preachings
Create image

“Nonconformity is an empty goal, and rebellion against prevailing opinion merely because it is prevailing should no more be praised than acquiescence to it. Indeed, it is often a mask for cowardice, and few are more pathetic than those who flaunt outer differences to expiate their inner surrender.”

ShouldGoalDifferencesOpinionEmptySurrenderMaskRebellionCowardicePatheticPrevailingNonconformityAcquiescence
Book:The Organization Man
Create image

“This is a photograph, so it is as you see: there are no lies and no deceptions. One can detect here, elevated to an incomparably higher level, the same pathetic emotional appeal that lies concealed in every fake spiritualist photograph, every pornographic photograph; one comes to suspect that the strange, disturbing emotional appeal of the photographic art consists solely in that same repeated refrain: this is a true ghost... this is a photograph, so it is as you see: there are no lies, no deceptions.”

ArtLyingLevelsEmotionalStrangeHigherPhotographGhostAppealsDeceptionFakeSuspectsDisturbingPatheticConcealedRefrainHigher LevelEmotional Appeal
Author:Yukio Mishima
Create image