Sourced

• "He that hath pity upon the poor lendeth unto the LORD; and that which he hath given will he pay him again."
  • Bible, Proverbs 19:17 (King James Version)

• "Shouldest not thou also have had compassion on thy fellowservant, even as I had pity on thee?"
  • Bible, Matthew 18:33 (King James Version)

• "No beast so fierce but knows some touch of pity."
  • William Shakespeare, Richard III, act I, scene II.

• "For pity melts the mind to love."
  • John Dryden Alexander's Feast (1697)

• "Yet, let it not be thought that I would exclude pity from the human mind. There are scarcely any that are not, to some degree, possessed of this pleasing softness; but it is at best but a short-lived passion, and seldom affords distress more than transitory assistance; with some it scarce lasts from the first impulse till the hand can be put into the pocket…"
  • Oliver Goldsmith The Bee (1759) No. 3, 20 October 1759 On the Use of Language

• "We pity in others only those evils which we have ourselves experienced."
  • Jean-Jacques Rousseau Emile: Or, On Education (1762)

• "O, brother man! fold to thy heart thy brother;
  where pity dwells, the peace of God is there."
  • John Greenleaf Whittier Worship

• More helpful than all wisdom is one draught of simple human pity that will not forsake us.
  • George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss (1860), book VII, ch. I

• "The world is full of love and pity, I say. Had there been less suffering, there would have been less kindness."
  • William Makepeace Thackeray, The Adventures of Philip (1862), chapter XXV.

• "Pity is an emotion equally unpleasant to the bestower as to the recipient."
  • Bolesław Prus, The Doll (1889).

• (Said about Nienna, the fictional goddess of sorrow:) "But she does not weep for herself; and those who hearken to her learn pity, and endurance in hope."
  • J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion (published 1977).

• "Do not scorn pity that is the gift of a gentle heart."
  • J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (published 1955).

Unsourced

• "Pity and forbearance, and long-sufferance and fair interpretation, and excusing our brother, and taking in the best sense, and passing the gentlest sentence, are as certainly our duty, and owing to every person that does offend and can repent, as calling to account can be owing to the law, and are first to be paid; and he that does not so is an unjust person."
  • Jeremy Taylor