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cruelty quotes

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“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
“Pity is the virtue of the law, and none but tyrants use it cruelly.” William Shakespeare, Timon of Athens
“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
“Some people hurt others just because they can” George R. R. Martin, A Storm of Swords
“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
“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
“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
“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'
“The cruelty of fooled honesty is often great after enlightenment, and it was mighty in Clare now.” Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d'Urbervilles
“It was woman that taught me cruelty, and on woman therefore I have exercised it; but not upon such as thou.” Walter Scott, Ivanhoe
“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
“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
“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
“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
“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
“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
“Terror made me cruel” Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights
“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
“Cruelty does not make a person dishonest, the same way bravery does not make a person kind.” Veronica Roth, Insurgent
“For man is the cruellest animal.” Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
“Intelligent men are cruel. Stupid men are monstrously cruel.” Jack London, The Star Rover
“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?
“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
“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
“He's not a rough diamond—a pearl-containing oyster of a rustic: he's a fierce, pitiless, wolfish man.” Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights
“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
“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
“men are always the same. Fear makes them cruel…” W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence
“I must be cruel, only to be kind: Thus bad begins, and worse remains behind.” William Shakespeare, Hamlet
“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
“there is nothing so cruel in this world as the desolation of having nothing to hope for.” Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

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

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

Related sources

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