Nietzsche Pity Quotes & Sayings

Thus spoke the devil to me, once on a time: "Even God has his hell: it is his love for man". And lately did I hear him say these words: "God is dead: of his pity for man has God died". — Friedrich Nietzsche

If we lacked curiosity, we should do less for the good of our neighbor. But, under the name of duty or pity, curiosity steals into the home of the unhappy and the needy. Perhaps even in the famous mother-love there is a good deal of curiosity. — Friedrich Nietzsche

You say it is the good cause that hallows even war? I say unto you: it is the good war that hallows any cause. War and courage have accomplished more great things than love of the neighbor. Not your pity but your courage has so far saved the unfortunate. — Friedrich Nietzsche

These smoky, room-temperature, used-up, wilted, fretful souls - how could their grudge endure my happiness? Hence I show them only the ice and the winter of my peaks - and not that my mountain still winds all the belts of the sun round itself. They hear only my winter winds whistling - and not that I also cross warm seas, like longing, heavy, hot south winds. They still have pity on my accidents; but my word says, Let accidents come to me, they are innocent as little children. — Friedrich Nietzsche

I presume that you are compassionate: to be without pity means to be sick in body and spirit. But one should have spirit in abundance, so as to be permitted to be compassionate! For your pity is detrimental to you and to everyone. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Meaning and morality of One's life come from within oneself. Healthy, strong individuals seek self expansion by experimenting and by living dangerously. Life consists of an infinite number of possibilities and the healthy person explores as many of them as posible. Religions that teach pity, self-contempt, humility, self-restraint and guilt are incorrect. The good life is ever changing, challenging, devoid of regret, intense, creative and risky. — Friedrich Nietzsche

To those human beings who are of any concern to me I wish suffering, desolation, sickness, ill-treatment, indignities - I wish that they should not remain unfamiliar with profound self-contempt, the torture of self-mistrust, the wretchedness of the vanquished: I have no pity for them, because I wish them the only thing that can prove today whether one is worth anything or not - that one endures. — Friedrich Nietzsche

It is thus only this personal feeling of misery that we get rid of by acts of pity. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Mediocrity is the most effective mask a superior spirit can wear, because to the great majority, which is to say, to the mediocre,it will not suggest a disguise:
and yet it is precisely for their sake that he puts it on
so as not to arouse them, and, indeed, not infrequently to avoid this out of pity and benevolence. — Friedrich Nietzsche

So long as the spectator has to figure out the meaning of this or that person, or the presuppositions of this or that conflict of inclinations and purposes, he cannot become completely absorbed in the activities and sufferings of the chief characters or feel breathless pity and fear. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Kindliness, friendliness, the courtesy of the heart, are ever-flowing streams of non egoistic impulses, and have given far more powerful assistance to culture than even those much more famous demonstrations which are called pity, mercy, and self-sacrifice. — Friedrich Nietzsche

A woman's pity, which is talkative, carries the sick person's bed to the public marketplace. — Friedrich Nietzsche

If all alms were given only from pity, all beggars would have starved long ago. — Friedrich Nietzsche

To regard states of distress in general as an objection, as something which must be abolished is the greatest nonsense on earth; having the most disastrous consequences, fatally stupid- almost as stupid as a wish to abolish bad weather - out of pity for the poor. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Pity is extolled as the virtue of prostitutes. — Friedrich Nietzsche

The deeper minds of all ages have had pity for animals. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Curiosity creeps into the houses of the unfortunate and the needy under the name of duty or of pity. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Pity aims just as little at the pleasure of others as malice at the pain of others Per-Se. — Friedrich Nietzsche

In a man devoted to knowledge, pity seems almost ridiculous, like delicate hands on a cyclops. — Friedrich Nietzsche

He was a hidden God, full of secrecy. Truly, he did not come by his son otherwise than by secret ways. At the door of his faith stands adultery.
Whoever extols him as a God of love, does not think highly enough of love itself. Did not that God want also to be judge? But the loving one loves irrespective of reward and requital.
When he was young, that God out of the Orient, then was he harsh and revengeful, and built himself a hell for the delight of his favourites.
At last, however, he became old and soft and mellow and pitiful, more like a grandfather than a father, but most like a tottering old grandmother. [...] and one day he suffocated of his all-too-great pity. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Pity is the most agreeable feeling among those who have little pride and no prospects of great conquests. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Alas, where in the world have there been greater follies than with the compassionate?
And what in the world has caused more suffering than the follies of the compassionate?
Woe to all lovers who cannot surmount pity!
Thus spoke the Devil to me once: Even God has his Hell: it is his love for man.
And I lately heard him say these words: God is dead; God has died of his pity for man. — Friedrich Nietzsche

If I must have pity, then I do not want to be called such; and if I do have pity, then rather from a distance. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Ah, where in the world have there been greater follies than with the pitiful? And what in the world hath caused more suffering than the follies of the pitiful?
Woe unto all loving ones who have not an elevation which is above their pity!
Thus spake the devil unto me, once on a time: "Even God hath his hell: it is his love for man." And lately, did I hear him say these words: "God is dead: of his pity for man hath God died. — Friedrich Nietzsche

The gilded sheath of pity sometimes covers the dagger of envy. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Pity makes suffering contagious. — Friedrich Nietzsche

... if you refuse to let your own suffering lie upon you for an hour and if you constantly try to prevent and forestall all possible stress way ahead of time; if you experience suffering and displeasure as evil, hateful, worthy of annihilation, and as a defect of existence, then it is clear that besides your religion of pity you also harbor another religion in your heart that is perhaps the mother of the religion of pity: the religion of comfortableness. How little you know of human happiness, you comfortable and benevolent people, for happiness and unhappiness are sisters and even twins that either grow up together or, as in your case, remain small together. — Friedrich Nietzsche

the pity which the spectators then exhibit is in so far a consolation for the weak and suffering in that the latter recognize therein that they possess still one power , in spite of their weakness, the power of giving pain. The unfortunate derives a sort of pleasure from this feeling of superiority, of which the exhibition of pity makes him conscious; his imagination is exalted, he is still powerful enough to give the world pain. Thus the thirst for pity is the thirst for self-gratification, and that, moreover, at the expense of his fellow-men; it shows man in the whole inconsiderateness of his own dear self, but — Friedrich Nietzsche

We must be cruel as well as compassionate: let us guard against becoming poorer than nature is! — Friedrich Nietzsche

Those who show pity and are always ready to help during times of trouble are seldom the same ones who rejoice in our joy: when others are happy they have nothing to do, they become superfluous and lose their feeling of superiority, and so they easily show their displeasure. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Where do your greatest dangers lie?
In pity. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Pity is the most pleasant feeling in those who have not much pride, and have no prospect of great conquests: the easy prey - and that is what every sufferer is - is for them an enchanting thing. — Friedrich Nietzsche

There did he sit shrivelled in his chimney corner, fretting on account of his weak legs, world weary, will weary, and one day he suffocated through his excessive pity. — Friedrich Nietzsche

We feign pity when we want to demonstrate our ascendancy over feelings of hostility: but usually in vain. Whenever we notice this,there is an accompanying surge in those hostile sensations. — Friedrich Nietzsche

This is the crux of the moral pessimists: if they really wanted to promote their neighbor's redemption, then they would have to resolve themselves to spoiling existence for him, and thus to being his misfortune; out of pity, they would have to
become evil! — Friedrich Nietzsche

Verily, I do not like them, the merciful who feel blessed in their pity: they are lacking too much in shame. If I must pity, at least I do not want it known; and if I do pity, it is preferably from a distance. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Thus spoke the devil to me once: "God too has his hell: it is his love of man." ... And most recently I heard him speak this word: "God is dead: God died of his pity for man." - On the Pitying — Friedrich Nietzsche

Nietzsche believed that if Pity were to become the core of ethics, misery would become contagious and happiness an object of suspicion — Arundhati Roy

Nothing is more pathological in our pathological modernity than this disease of Christian pity. — Friedrich Nietzsche

A person must have a good memory to keep the promises he has made. A person must have a strong imagination to be able to have pity. So closely is morality tied to the quality of the intellect. — Friedrich Nietzsche

It is a pity that there was no Dostoevsky living near this most interesting decadent [Jesus], I mean someone with an eye for the distinctive charm that this sort of mixture of sublimity, sickness, and childishness has to offer. — Friedrich Nietzsche

What is more harmful than any vice? Practical sympathy and pity for all the failures and all the weak : Christianity. — Friedrich Nietzsche

The "religion of pity" to which people would like to convert us- oh, we know well enough the hysterical little men and women who need this religion at present as a veil and an adornment! — Friedrich Nietzsche

Socrates, the dialectical hero of the Platonic drama, reminds us of the kindred nature of the Euripidean hero who must defend his actions with arguments and counterarguments and in the process often risks the loss of our tragic pity; for who could mistake the optimistic element in the nature of the dialectic, which celebrates a triumph with every conclusion and can breathe only in cool clarity and consciousness. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Pity thwarts the whole law of evolution, which is the law of natural selection. It preserves whatever is ripe for destruction; — Friedrich Nietzsche

Towards gnats and fleas we should show no pity. We would do right to hang petty thieves, petty calumniators, and slanderers. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Christianity is called the religion of pity. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Emotion is not a defect in an otherwise perfect reasoning machine. Reason, unfettered from human feeling, has led to as many horrors as any crusader's zeal. What use is pity in a world devoted to maximizing efficiency and productivity? Scientific husbandry tells us to weed out the sick, the infirm, the weak. The ruthless efficiency of euthanasia initiatives and ethnic cleansing are but the programmatic application of Nietzsche's point: from any quantifiable cost-benefit analysis, the principles of animal husbandry should apply to the human race. Charles Darwin himself acknowledged that strict obedience to "hard reason" rather than sympathy for fellow humans would represent a sacrifice of "the noblest part of our nature."6 It is the human heart resonating with empathy, not the logical brain attuned to the mathematics of efficiency, that revolts at cruelty and inhumanity. In — Terryl L. Givens