All depression has its roots in self-pity, and all self-pity is rooted in people taking themselves too seriously.

In my terms, I settled for the realities of life, and submitted to its necessities: if this, then that, and so the years passed. In Adrian's terms, I gave up on life, gave up on examining it, took it as it came. And so, for the first time, I began to feel a more general remorse - a feeling somewhere between self-pity and self-hatred - about my whole life. All of it. I had lost the friends of my youth. I had lost the love of my wife. I had abandoned the ambitions I had entertained. I had wanted life not to bother me too much, and had succeeded - and how pitiful that was.

Self pity is easily the most destructive of the non-pharmaceutical narcotics; it is addictive, gives momentary pleasure and separates the victim from reality.

There came an awful day when I picked up the phone and knew at once, as one does with some old friends even before they speak, that it was Edward. He sounded as if he were calling from the bottom of a well. I still thank my stars that I didn't say what I nearly said, because the good professor's phone pals were used to cheering or teasing him out of bouts of pessimism and insecurity when he would sometimes say ridiculous things like: 'I hope you don't mind being disturbed by some mere wog and upstart.' The remedy for this was not to indulge it but to reply with bracing and satirical stuff which would soon get the gurgling laugh back into his throat. But I'm glad I didn't say, 'What, Edward, splashing about again in the waters of self-pity?' because this time he was calling to tell me that he had contracted a rare strain of leukemia. Not at all untypically, he used the occasion to remind me that it was very important always to make and keep regular appointments with one's physician.

The weeping of the candle is not in mourning for the moth: the dawn is at hand, and it is thinking of its own dark night.

All black people who are even minimally conscious, black people who have ever experienced Europe's technological power crusading in the vanguard of a civilizing mission, have profound feelings of inferiority and bitterly regret the fact that the Industrial Revolution did not agreeably commence in Dahomey or Dakar. Nothing is achieved by concealing this fact.

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.

Self-pity is the simplest luxury.

Life, I fancy, would very often be insupportable but for the luxury of self-compassion; in cases numberless, this it must be that saves from suicide.

Self-pity - it's the only pity that counts.

Shall a man go and hang himself because he belongs to the race of pygmies, and not be the biggest pygmy that he can?

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

Life, I fancy, would very often be insupportable, but for the luxury of self-compassion.

Every man supposes himself not to be fully understood or appreciated.

Self-pity is in its early stage as snug as a feather mattress. Only when it hardens does it become uncomfortable.

Never feel self-pity, the most destructive emotion there is. How awful to be caught up in the terrible squirrel-cage of self.