| | |

cruelty quotes

English (32) Français (27)

edits filters

“But some things are not forgivable. Deliberate cruelty is not forgivable. It is the one unforgivable thing in my opinion and it is the one thing of which I have never, never been guilty.” Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire
“People talk sometimes of bestial cruelty, but that's a great injustice and insult to the beasts; a beast can never be so cruel as a man, so artistically cruel.” Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
“Cruelty does not make a person dishonest, the same way bravery does not make a person kind.” Veronica Roth, Insurgent
“There are few uglier traits of human nature than this tendency—which I now witnessed in men no worse than their neighbors—to grow cruel, merely because they possessed the power of inflicting harm.” Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
“For man is the cruellest animal.” Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
“Pity is the virtue of the law, and none but tyrants use it cruelly.” William Shakespeare, Timon of Athens
“Intelligent men are cruel. Stupid men are monstrously cruel.” Jack London, The Star Rover
“When lenity and cruelty play for a kingdom, the gentler gamester is the soonest winner.” William Shakespeare, Henry V
“What if cruelty had grown into a common passion? What if in this interval the race had lost its manliness and had developed into something inhuman, unsympathetic, and overwhelmingly powerful?” H. G. Wells, The Time Machine
“Some people hurt others just because they can” George R. R. Martin, A Storm of Swords
“I know life is hard, I think everyone knows that in their hearts, but why does it have to be cruel, as well? Why does it have to bite?” Stephen King, 11/22/63
“I must be cruel, only to be kind: Thus bad begins, and worse remains behind.” William Shakespeare, Hamlet
“The cruelty of fooled honesty is often great after enlightenment, and it was mighty in Clare now.” Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d'Urbervilles
“For of all slaveholders with whom I have ever met, religious slaveholders are the worst. I have ever found them the meanest and basest, the most cruel and cowardly, of all others.” Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave
“He's not a rough diamond—a pearl-containing oyster of a rustic: he's a fierce, pitiless, wolfish man.” Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights
“Men were indeed more foolish and more cruel than the beasts of the jungle! How fortunate was he who lived in the peace and security of the great forest!” Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan of the Apes
“It is vain to recount further the catalogue of miseries. In earlier ages such horrors remain unknown because unrecorded. Just enough flickering light plays upon this infernal scene to give us the sense of its utter desolation and hopeless...” Winston Churchill, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples
“there is nothing so cruel in this world as the desolation of having nothing to hope for.” Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
“Why did they make birds so delicate and fine as those sea swallows when the ocean can be so cruel?” Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea
“Had I been born where laws are less strict and tastes less dainty, I should treat myself to a slow vivisection of those two, as an evening's amusement.” Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights
“It was impossible that he did not love her still. Did you cease to love a person because you had been treated cruelly?” W. Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil
“If everyone in the world sat quietly at the same time, closed their eyes and concentrated as hard as they could on peace and goodwill, all the killing and cruelty in the world would continue. And probably increase.” George Carlin, When Will Jesus Bring The Pork Chops?
“April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain.” T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land
“men are always the same. Fear makes them cruel…” W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence
“Now goblins are cruel, wicked, and bad-hearted. They make no beautiful things, but they make many clever ones.” J. R. R. Tolkien, The Hobbit
“Moreover, when our hearts are authentically open to universal communion, this sense of fraternity excludes nothing and no one. It follows that our indifference or cruelty towards fellow creatures of this world sooner or later affects the...” Pope Francis, Laudato si'
“I like to hurt people too. I can make the cruelest choice. The difference is, sometimes I don't, and you always do, and that makes you evil.” Veronica Roth, Allegiant
“It was woman that taught me cruelty, and on woman therefore I have exercised it; but not upon such as thou.” Walter Scott, Ivanhoe
“Never . . . be mean in anything; never be false; never be cruel. Avoid those three vices . . . and I can always be hopeful of you.” Charles Dickens, David Copperfield
“the more helpless a creature, the more entitled it is to protection by man from the cruelty of man.” Mahatma Gandhi, The Story of my Experiments with Truth
“Terror made me cruel” Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights
“The visitor from outer space made a serious study of Christianity, to leam, if he could, why Christians found it so easy to be cruel.” Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

Related topics

power animals men evil man kindness peace forgiveness love religion fear stupidity pain humanity hope woman bravery intelligence suffering honesty

Related authors

William Shakespeare (3)
Emily Brontë (3)
W. Somerset Maugham (2)
Veronica Roth (2)
Mahatma Gandhi (1)
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1)
Jack London (1)
Edgar Rice Burroughs (1)
J. R. R. Tolkien (1)
Friedrich Nietzsche (1)
George R. R. Martin (1)
Haruki Murakami (1)
Stephen King (1)
Charles Dickens (1)
Kurt Vonnegut (1)
Ernest Hemingway (1)
Winston Churchill (1)
Thomas Hardy (1)
Tennessee Williams (1)
Frederick Douglass (1)

Related sources

Wuthering Heights (3)
A Storm of Swords (1)
The Story of my Experiments with Truth (1)
Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1)
The Brothers Karamazov (1)
Hamlet (1)
The Hobbit (1)
The Scarlet Letter (1)
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (1)
David Copperfield (1)
The Old Man and the Sea (1)
Slaughterhouse-Five (1)
The Time Machine (1)
Henry V (1)
The Moon and Sixpence (1)
Ivanhoe (1)
Tarzan of the Apes (1)
The Star Rover (1)
A Streetcar Named Desire (1)
Timon of Athens (1)