“This is pity,” he thought, and then he lifted his head in wonder. He thought that there must be something terribly wrong with a world in which this monstrous feeling is called a virtue.”

— Ayn Rand , book The Fountainhead

Source: The Fountainhead

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Ayn Rand 322

Russian-American novelist and philosopher 1905–1982

Henry S. Haskins (1875–1957)

Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 115

“He has a mild grave face; a thoughtful sternness, a sorrowful pity: but there is a terrible flash of anger in him too.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Past and Present (1843)

“Stefan shook his head., he thought.”

Tamora Pierce book Alanna: The First Adventure

Source: Alanna: The First Adventure

“With his head in his hands,
God thought and thought,
Till he thought: I'll make me a man!”

James Weldon Johnson (1871–1938) writer and activist

The Creation, st. 10.
God's Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse (1927)

“The chief pleasure of his life in these days was to go down the road and look through the window in the wall in the hope of seeing the beautiful Island. … the sight of the Island and the sounds became very rare … and the yearning for the sight … became so terrible that John thought he would die if he did not have them again soon. … it came into his head that he might perhaps get the old feeling-for what, he thought, had the Island ever given him but a feeling?–by imagining. He shut his eyes and set his teeth again and made a picture of the Island in his mind.”

Clive Staples Lewis book The Pilgrim's Regress

Pilgrim’s Regress 12–13
The Pilgrim's Regress (1933)

“He told Dorothy he had brushed his shaggy hair and whiskers; but she thought he must have brushed them the wrong way, for they were quite as shaggy as before.”

L. Frank Baum book The Road to Oz

The Road to Oz, Ch. 4 : King Dox (1909)
Later Oz novels

“He looked up from it at the stars again, and the view was warped and distorted by something in his eyes, which at first he thought was rain.”

Iain Banks Culture series

Source: Culture series, The Player of Games (1988), Chapter 4 “The Passed Pawn” (p. 390).

“It was not the sense that something had been there. It was the sense that something was still there, palpable but not visible. A sense (and now he thought he was really losing his mind) that the forest was grieving, or that something in it was dying…a feeling, if he had to name it, that evil had been there.”

Lis Wiehl (1961) American legal scholar

Source: Waking Hours: Book 1 in East Salem Trilogy with Pete Nelson (Thomas Nelson), pp. 24, 26

“It is always thought that he gave more than what he received, but to give something, you must have something inside.”

Rudolf Nureyev (1938–1993) Soviet ballet dancer and choreographer

Source: Gervaso, Roberto. La mosca al naso, Rizzoli Editore (1980)

“Then he [The Star Child] waited, marshaling his thoughts and brooding over his still untested powers. For though he was master of the world, he was not quite sure what to do next. But he would think of something.”

Arthur C. Clarke book 2001: A Space Odyssey

Source: 2001: A Space Odyssey

“This is pity,” he thought, and then he lifted his head in wonder. He thought that there must be something terribly wrong with a world in which this monstrous feeling is called a virtue.”

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Ayn Rand 322

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