“Never to blend our pleasure or our pride
With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels.”
William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet
Hart-leap Well, part ii.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Plea of the Midsummer Fairies; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
20th century
“Never to blend our pleasure or our pride
With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels.”
William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet
Hart-leap Well, part ii.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“That most risky and volatile of all things—a self-pitying majority.”
Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist
"Appointment in Sarajevo" (1992).
1990s, For the Sake of Argument: Essays and Minority Reports (1993)
“E'en here the tear of pity springs,
And hearts are touched by human things.”
John Conington (1825–1869) British classical scholar
Source: Translations, The Aeneid of Virgil (1866), Book I, p. 23
Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer
Source: Blue Pastures
William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham (1708–1778) British politician
Speech in the House of Commons (1766), quoted in Parliamentary History of England (London, 1813), vol. 6, col. 195.
Arlo Guthrie (1947) American folk singer
And they all came back, shook my hand, and we had a great time on the bench.
Alice's Restaurant Massacree