Better be spited than pitied. [ Proverb ]

Better it is to be envied than pitied. [ Proverb ]

He that always complains is never pitied. [ Proverb ]

Honest error is to be pitied, not ridiculed. [ Lord Chesterfield ]

No one wishes to be pitied on account of his errors. [ Vauvenargues ]

The virtuous woman who falls in love is much to be pitied. [ La Rochefoucauld ]

That sick man is not to be pitied who hath his cure in his sleeve. [ Proverb ]

If our inward griefs were seen written on our brow, how many would be pitied who are now envied! [ Metastasio ]

The misanthropist is to be pitied when his despair proceeds from an ardent love for the good, the beautiful, and the true. [ George Sand ]

If misery be the effect of virtue, it ought to be reverenced; if of ill-fortune, to be pitied; and if of vice, not to be insulted, because it is perhaps itself a punishment adequate to the crime by which it was produced. [ Dr. Johnson ]

He that has no resources of mind, is more to be pitied than he who is in want of necessaries for the body; and to be obliged to beg our daily happiness from others, bespeaks a more lamentable poverty than that of him who begs his daily bread. [ Colton ]

If ever you have looked on better days, if ever been where bells have knolled to church, if ever sat at any good man's feast, if ever from your eyelids wiped a tear and know what it is to pity and be pitied, let gentleness my strong enforcement sue. [ William Shakespeare ]