Self-pity

"What, therefore, is the cause of your condition? What lies at the root of your malaise (as the Latins call it)? What leads to your sense of physical ill and to the gloom and depression with which you greet the world? Just the glamour of preoccupation— an intense preoccupation with yourself. If I should call this attitude "self-pity," will you accept it and use your intelligent mind to reason yourself out of your impasse? p. 493"

"Self-pity is not as sterile as we suppose. Once we feel its mere onset, we assume a thinker's attitude, and come to think of it, we come to think!"

"Self-pity is our worst enemy and if we yield to it, we can never do anything wise in this world."

"Self-pity? I see no moral objections to it, the smell drives people away, but that's a practical objection, and occasionally an advantage."

"Self-pity gets you nowhere. One must have the adventurous daring to accept oneself as a bundle of possibilities and undertake the most interesting game in the world — making the most of one's best."

"Self-pity is an ignoble emotion, but we all feel it, and the orthodox critical line that it represents some kind of artistic flaw is dubious, a form of emotional correctness."

"You cannot depend upon anybody. There is no guide, no teacher, no authority. There is only you — your relationship with others and with the world — there is nothing else. When you realize this, it either brings great despair, from which comes cynicism and bitterness, or, in facing the fact that you and nobody else is responsible for the world and for yourself, for what you think, what you feel, how you act, all self-pity goes. Normally we thrive on blaming others, which is a form of self-pity."

"I never saw a wild thing Sorry for itself. A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself."

"One recalls how much the creative impulse of the best-sellers depends upon self-pity. It is an emotion of great dramatic potential."

"Moreover, given the unpleasant option of having to associate with either the self-satisfied beautiful or the self-pitying plain, he'd choose the former every time because beauty could sometimes transcend smugness whereas self-pity just made ugliness all the more unattractive."

"I never complained of the vicissitudes of fortune, nor suffered my face to be overcast at the revolution of the heavens, except once, when my feet were bare, and I had not the means of obtaining shoes. I came to the chief of Kfah in a state of much dejection, and saw there a man who had no feet. I returned thanks to God and acknowledged his mercies, and endured my want of shoes with patience, and exclaimed, "Roast fowl to him that's sated will seem less Upon the board than leaves of garden cress. While, in the sight of helpless poverty, Boiled turnip will a roasted pullet be.""