Pity (n.) is native to the human heart, but it would stay eternally quiescent unless imagination woke it.
Pity (n.) hurries us without reflection to the relief of those in distress; in a state of nature it supplies the place of laws, morals, and virtues.
Pity (n.) is the first diversion of the love of self, a deferral of it more than an estrangement from it.
Pity (n.) protects man (homo) from destruction through the fury of love, as it protects man (vir) from destruction through the fury of woman.
Pity (n.) is possible only as a certain non-identification: feel another's suffering too fully and it turns unjust.
Pity (n.) makes us suffer not in ourselves but in the one who suffers: we suffer only as much as we believe him to suffer.
Pity (n.) was for Nietzsche the true subversion of culture and the form of servitude of the masters.