- 1790: The head Sublime, the heart Pathos, the genitals Beauty, the hands & feet Proportion. — William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 1790
- 1841: His coat, his waistcoat, his shoes and stockings, his trousers, his hat, his wit and humour, his pathos and his umbrella, all come before me like visions of my youth. — Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop, 1841
- 1846–1848: 'Won't you come with your poor Nurse Wickam, Master Paul?' inquired that attendant, with great pathos. — Charles Dickens, Dombey and Son, 1846–1848
- 1854: Finally, she wished him good night, with great pathos — Charles Dickens, Hard Times, 1854
- 1874: His voice had a genuine pathos now, and his large brown hands perceptibly trembled. — Thomas Hardy, Far From The Madding Crowd, 1874
- 1891: What arrested him now as of value in life was less its beauty than its pathos. — Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, 1891.
- 1919: With an overwhelming sense of pathos, for there is no pathos more bitter than that of parting from someone we have never met, George hailed a taxicab which crawled at the side of the road; and, with all the refrains of all the sentimental song hits he had ever composed ringing in his ears, he got in and passed away. — P. G. Wodehouse, A Damsel in Distress, 1919
- 1977: The very attack [by Marxism] on God and the historical religions fosters a religious pathos, which attracts the often deracinated emotional energies of numerous contemporary men and women to itself. — Joseph Ratzinger, Eschatology: Death and Eternal Life, 1977
