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cruelty quotes

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“For man is the cruellest animal.” Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
“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
“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
“Intelligent men are cruel. Stupid men are monstrously cruel.” Jack London, The Star Rover
“Pity is the virtue of the law, and none but tyrants use it cruelly.” William Shakespeare, Timon of Athens
“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
“When lenity and cruelty play for a kingdom, the gentler gamester is the soonest winner.” William Shakespeare, Henry V
“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
“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
“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
“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'
“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
“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
“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
“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
“It was woman that taught me cruelty, and on woman therefore I have exercised it; but not upon such as thou.” Walter Scott, Ivanhoe
“The cruelty of fooled honesty is often great after enlightenment, and it was mighty in Clare now.” Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d'Urbervilles
“Cruelty does not make a person dishonest, the same way bravery does not make a person kind.” Veronica Roth, Insurgent
“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
“Terror made me cruel” Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights
“He's not a rough diamond—a pearl-containing oyster of a rustic: he's a fierce, pitiless, wolfish man.” Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights
“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 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
“Some people hurt others just because they can” George R. R. Martin, A Storm of Swords
“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
“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
“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
“men are always the same. Fear makes them cruel…” W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence
“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

Related topics

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

Related authors

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

Related sources

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