But a modern Oedipus who is doomed because he cannot oppose his own childhood is only pathetic, and for renouncing the mystery in favor of psychological truth he gives up the claim on our sympathies.

The wife's attempt at control, these psychologists contend, is sometimes merely a pathetic effort to compel her husband to pay as much attention to her as he does to his job.

While conceding he is sometimes good, the authors claim Burton's " occasional triumphs only serve to highlight the pathetic waste in most of his films ; for every Equus in which he appears there are at least a half-dozen Cleopatras or Boom! s.

By the end of the series he is a pathetic figure, reduced to stealing his son's blood to preserve his immortality.

Sam Levene is affectingly gentle in his brief bit as the Jewish victim, and Gloria Grahame is believably brazen and pathetic as a girl of the streets.

Kev is cast as kind of a pathetic little guy.

Since many of the motet texts of the 1589 and 1591 sets are pathetic in tone, it is not surprising that many of them continue and develop the ' affective-imitative ' vein found in some motets from the 1570s, though in a more concise and concentrated form.

' The tale is moral and pathetic, but the truth of it may very fairly be called in question.

Critic Bosley Crowther, film critic for The New York Times, liked the screenplay, the message of the film, and John Ford's direction, and wrote, " John Ford has truly fashioned a modern Odyssey — a stark and tough-fibered motion picture which tells with lean economy the never-ending story of man's wanderings over the waters of the world in search of peace for his soul ... it is harsh and relentless and only briefly compassionate in its revelation of man's pathetic shortcomings.

What they especially praise is the ethos or permanent moral level of his works as compared with those of the later so called " pathetic " school.

Darnley is portrayed as a snivelling, pathetic character who marries Mary as part of a plot by Elizabeth I ( Glenda Jackson ) to weaken Mary's claim to the English throne.

" He goes on to say that " his downfall, while pathetic, is not entirely undeserved.

However, when Fry reads Hermes ' mind in " Into the Wild Green Yonder ", it is revealed that Hermes sees him as " pathetic but lovable ".

A pathetic letter is still in existence, in which Kendall tells McCrae that he could not go to Gordon's funeral because he was penniless.

Hagan, who is a member of the Presbyterian Church and a former Sunday school teacher, condemned the ad as " fabricated and pathetic ," and, according to Hagan's campaign website, a cease-and-desist letter was " hand-delivered to Dole's Raleigh office and to her home at the Watergate in Washington, DC.

The pathetic fallacy is the treatment of inanimate objects as if they had human feelings, thought, or sensations.

The word ' pathetic ' in this use is related to ' pathos ' or ' empathy ' ( capability of feeling ), and is not pejorative.

In the discussion of literature, the pathetic fallacy is similar to personification.

Although Fowler retains a mention of human emotion, an essential aspect in Ruskin, “ ordinary modern use pathos and pathetic are limited to the idea of painful emotion ; but in this phrase, now common though little recognized in dictionaries, the original wider sense of emotion in general is reverted to, and ... fallacy means the tendency to credit nature with human emotions .”

In 1971, M. H. Abrams, in A Glossary of Literary Terms, notes that the term has undergone a relative diminishment of form and defines pathetic fallacy as “ a common phenomenon in descriptive poetry, in which the ascription of human traits to inanimate nature is less formally managed than in the figure called personification .”

“ The pathos has largely gone out of the pathetic fallacy ,” says Jeffrey M. Hurwit, writing in The Classical Journal in 1982: “ Today it is generally regarded simply as a variety of personification ...

There were several fairly good minor portraits in the play, including William Hansen's impersonation of a stubborn, rather pathetic father, and Katherine Squire's vigorous characterization of a farm mother who brooked no hifalutin' nonsense from her daughter, or anyone else.

Thales successfully negotiated low prices because the harvest was in the future and no one knew whether the harvest would be plentiful or pathetic and because the olive-press owners were willing to hedge against the possibility of a poor yield.

The two are extremely incompetent to the point where they struggle with even simple tasks, and are highly gullible, easily being tricked by Sonic no matter how bizarre, obvious, or pathetic his disguises are.

Grant such an hypothesis, and then loyalty becomes no pathetic serving of a myth.

He works tirelessly to prove his hunch that Peter is up to no good, but Jennifer writes off Jack's claims as the pathetic schemes he had become all too known for.

According to Moyes, Nile was a pathetic figure who has never laughed, has no friends, is a workaholic, has no interests or hobbies, eats fast-food meals and when in Sydney attending Parliament, spends every night alone in a cheap motel in western Sydney.

The Daily Telegraph wrote: " With the public no doubt the musical gem will be a ballad called ' Cousin Robin '— pathetic and tender words, with a dreamy and somewhat Gounodish air.

When Wolf Blitzer came to Palin's defense, Cafferty snapped back indicating " there's no excuse for that, don't make excuses for her, that's pathetic!

This is a malicious game of threat of inflation, where Bush ( a pathetic moron who resembles no one so much as our greatest president, Gerald Ford ) is puffed up into Midland, Texas ' own version of Saddam Hussein.

He was accustomed to mingle the pathetic and humorous in such a way as to attract thousands to hear him who had no purpose but to be interested and amused.

On 27 February 2008, he called on all European newspapers to print the Muhammad cartoons with the explanation: " We also think they're pathetic, but the use of press freedom is no reason to resort to violence.

However Lalic writes of 15 ... Bb8, " it is true that the bishop pair looks a bit pathetic lined up on the back rank just now, but there is no way to stop them breaking out later ".

Ito often heard from fellow co-workers that Tasogare Seibei was a very unfortunate character, a most pathetic samurai with no luck at all.

In September 2008, Moyes claimed Nile was too old to be a viable leader, accusing him of being " a pathetic figure " who was a " loner " with " no peers or friends ".

The New York Weekly wrote, "... no one ever heard of Dixie's land being other than Manhattan Island until recently, when it has been erroneously supposed to refer to the South, from its connection with pathetic negro allegory.

However, after making him " pathetic ", they could not regard him as a business owner any longer, and it was explained seasons later in " And Maggie Makes Three " that his Uncle Al owns the alley and named it after him.

I looked at the pathetic wreck of a woman before me.

" Sowell called her position " a pathetic sign of intellectual bankruptcy ," saying that he " was almost 9 years old before lived in a home with running water " and that she " was a campus social leader in an ' exclusive sorority ' - meaning that it was for middle-class ( light-skinned ) women " while he worked full time and went to same college at night.

The company's actual name, as spoken in the TV series, was " Path-Way Electronics " before merging with " E-Tech Management ", making it " Path-E-Tech Management " ( a play on the word " pathetic "), but when Dogbert acquired it later in the episode, there was a " Dogbert Inc ." sign being lifted into place.

[...] Compared with what had come before, M. I. U. Album was a pathetic attempt at music making ; compared with what was to come however, this was a highlight.

His " Dialog with a Friend ," written after his recovery, gives a pathetic picture of a poor poet, now fifty-three, with sight and mind impaired, but with hopes still left of writing a tale he owes his good patron, Humphrey of Gloucester, and of translating a small Latin treatise, Scite Mori, before he dies.

I shall parade you before their conquered peoples as the fallen idol of a pathetic ideal.

When Benizakura wished to have a rematch with him, Tsuna ' arashi was discovered in his pathetic state, and Benizakura killed the dogs beating him before running away.

Then if she still declines to come we slap the writs on her before she reaches CW as we don ’ t want to be seen publically being brutal to such a pathetic victim from a concentration camp .”