Cruelty

“ That is to say, for souls, all of vigour, vindictiveness, hostility, malice, suspicion, ready to face every terror and hardened through privation and morality? The enjoyment of cruelty: just as it is deemed a virtue, in such a soul and amid such conditions, to be ingenious and insatiable in cruelty. The community take delight in performing cruel deeds, throwing aside for once the gloom of constant dread and precaution. ”

“ Methinks the effects of the cruelty of a husband or of a father, would be just as sore on the back or head of a wife, or of a child, as if they were the effects of the cruelty of a slave-holder: a rose smells as sweet by any other name! ”

“ All the tortures which wanton cruelty could devise all the lingering pains of body, the anguish of mind, the agonies of despair, could not satiate revenge excited without injury, and cruelty derived from no cause. ”

“ The cruelty—the cruelty; there is so much, so much! Why shouldn't tenderness come in? Why should our woman's hearts be so full of it, and all so wasted and withered, while armies and prisons and helpless miseries grow greater all the while? ”

“ Now, of all the blood-dyed mandates that ever issued from human lips, or was heard on the plains of human butchery, none ever excelled it in cruelty and malignant barbarity, claimed as coming from the mouth of a God of infinite justice and infinite benevolence. Think of the murder, in cold blood, of thousands of little innocent, prattling babies, who never lisped an evil word, or conceived an evil thought, in their lives! ”

“ Now a scene of persecution and cruelty began which far exceeds in atrocity anything which history has related. Every tie of nature and society was broken, every duty and every relation violated, and torture forced from all alike false accusations, betrayal of friends, confession of impossible crimes ”

“ But the perpetration of such hideous cruelty could never have become a permanent national custom, but for this universal desire in the human mind to behold man in every situation, putting forth his strength against the current of adversity, scorning all bodily anguish, or struggling with those feelings of nature, which, like a beating stream, will off times burst through the artificial barriers of pride. ”

“ It has produced more misery than all the other doctrines in the world. It has shed more blood; it has made more martyrs. It has lighted the fires of persecution and kept the sword of cruelty wet with heroic blood for at least a thousand years. ”

“ When I thought of the little sallow-faced lad whom I had remembered years before, of the long and savage cruelty with which he had been treated in childhood—cruelty none the less real for having been due to ignorance and stupidity rather than to deliberate malice ”

“ When the most cultivated and intelligent men in the state formally, calmly and without any apparent perception of saying anything inhuman, utter such an astounding decision as this, what can be thought of it? If they do not consider this cruel, what is cruel? And, if their feelings are so blunted as to see no cruelty in such a decision, what hope is there of any protection to the slave? ”

“ After this we continued our journey, and as they got out of the cab, our friend was saying, "My doctrine is this, that if we see cruelty or wrong that we have the power to stop, and do nothing, we make ourselves sharers in the guilt." ”

“ We have simply added the misery of punishment to the misery of crime, and the cruelty of the judge to the cruelty of the criminal. We have taken the bad man, and made him worse by torture and degradation, incidentally making ourselves worse in the process. ”

“ The picture becomes gloomier and gloomier; and seems at last to be painted rather with blood than with colours. With horror we behold fury giving birth to fury, vengeance to vengeance, and see that when all the bonds of human society are violently torn asunder, even noble matrons became hardened to cruelty. ”

“ I have neither the will nor the right to blame, Yet to many (though not to all) The sweets of destruction are somewhat tame When no personal risks befall; Our victims suffer but little, we trust (Mere guess-work and blank enigma) , If they suffer at all, our field sports must Of cruelty bear the stigma. ”

“ Lamentable sufferings and death fell on innocent as well as guilty. Hate and despair combined to arouse an undistinguishing cruelty, and, in some of the leading actors, a cold-blooded ferocity. Nevertheless, recognizing all this—recognizing also the truth that those who wreaked this vengeance were intrinsically no better than those on whom it was wreaked—we must admit that the bloodshed had its excuse. ”

“ Your wickedness and cruelty, committed in this respect on your fellow-creatures, are greater than all the stripes you have laid upon my back or theirs. It is an outrage upon the soul, a war upon the immortal spirit, and one for which you must give account at the bar of our common Father and Creator. ”

“ Now what is it moves our very hearts, and sickens us so much at cruelty shown to poor brutes? I suppose this first, that they have done no harm; next, that they have no power whatever of resistance; it is the cowardice and tyranny of which they are the victims which makes their sufferings so especially touching. ”

“ And as she thought of all the evil deeds of that host of mankind known as criminals, and of that other host that punished them, she saw that both crime and punishment emanated from the same ignorant spirit of cruelty and fear. Would they ever learn of the great equity and tolerance, the simple love in nature? ”

“ It isn’t destruction for cruelty’s sake,” he went on, his fingers closing and unclosing at his side over a handful of sand. “Cruelty is mere inverted sentiment. Cruelty implies attraction, passion, even—in some cases—love. Pure destruction—destruction for its own sake—such as I see it—is no thick, heavy, muddy, perverted impulse such as the cruel are obsessed by. ”

“ Men of all ranks and ages, done to death by his hand or his head, by poison, by the knife, by drowning, by starvation—women deceived or violated, and then murdered, while their kisses were yet warm on his lips—infants tortured to death in the very wantonness of cruelty, and crime that must have been nigh akin to madness, gibbered, and glared upon him. ”

“ Fair Play demands that Squalor shall not be, That bread and wholesome food shall be Man’s due, That able-bodied persons shall not loaf, That none shall be denied the right to work, That habitations must be fit abodes, Not dens of Misery and Pestilence, That cruelty to man or to the brute Shall be a most severely punished Crime, For Cruelty to anything that feels Is Crime undoubtedly. ”

“ We have here, however, an important distinction to draw. Under the name of cruelty are comprised two kinds of vice, altogether different in their causes and in most of their consequences. There is the cruelty which springs from callousness and brutality, and there is the cruelty of vindictiveness. The first belongs chiefly to hard, dull, and somewhat lethargic characters, it appears most frequently in strong and conquering nations and in temperate climates, and it is due in a very great degree to defective realisation. ”

“ Crimes of worse than brutal violence, savage cruelty, crimes of treachery and cowardly cunning and conspiracy, breach of trust, tyrannical extortion, groveling intemperance, sensuality gross and shameless—the heart sickens at the record of a week's crime! ”

“ We begin by wounding the victim, and then we kill it, that the sight of our cruelty may no longer put us to the blush. Late reflections upon those days of error have unveiled for me many a dark depth in the human heart. ”

“ What a host--larger, again, than both the others--of every generation of men are bound by custom in the service of cruelty. It is supposed that every year a million little children die from neglect, wilful exposure, or other form of cruelty. Think of the bondage of those who kill them! ”

“ Worsted in one quarter, they arose in another, employing with unscrupulous daring every means that cunning or audacity could bring within their power,—claiming the excuse of necessity for those acts of rapine and cruelty in the satisfaction of personal enmities, the warfare upon the women and children, and the thousand barbarous deeds which make the history of that time a continual record of horrors. ”

“ If only we do not allow our heart to grow callous, its protest against cruelty is always clearly heard; and yet we go on perpetrating cruelties easily, merrily, all of us—in fact, any one who does not join in is dubbed a crank. ”

“ But thy children are tortured, taunted, and hurried out of life by unprecedented cruelty. Brave men, formed in the divinest mould, are bartered, sold, and mortgaged. Stripped of every sacred right, they are scourged if they affirm that they belong to God. ”

“ Whence it comes to pass, that in their results we have sometimes found the same spirit of cruelty and revenge, of malice and pride, the same blindness and obstinacy and unsteadiness, the same ungovernable rage and anger, the same injustice, sophistry, and fraud, that ever lodged in the breast of any individual. ”

“ If we revel in stories of blood, and are pleased with the sight of barbaric cruelty, we find it easy to become a Caligula or a Domitian; we picture to ourselves scenes of cruelty in which we are actors, and soon await only the opportunity to vie in atrocity with the Neroes of the past. ”

“ Profane history and vulgar experience add their mite of witness. The cruel to animals end in cruelty to man; and strange and violent deaths, marked with retribution's bloody finger, have in all ages fallen from heaven on such as wantonly harm innocent beasts. ”

“ Some experience, which would be nothing but a hideous cruelty and outrage to ask too closely about—one, perhaps, which he could, even if he would, poor fellow, give no account of—has put him temporarily at the world’s mercy. ”

“ Women screamed and fainted, men burst into indignant clamors at this prolonged cruelty. Even the hard hearts of the populace, accustomed as they were to the sacrifice of life, were roused to honest curses. ”

“ But you shall try in the day of judgement what account you shall make to God, I have seen barbarous nations, but I never saw or heard of the like cruelty: that a man sheuld be cut in pieces, their heads sent one way, their hands another way, and the other parts of the bodie to other places, what crueltie is this! ”

“ Physiologists are inclined to attribute it to our heavy atmosphere, which induces gloomy thoughts and fancies; while moralists assign as its cause, the sanguinary spirit of our laws, our brutal exhibitions of hanging, drawing and quartering, of gibbettings, whippings, brandings, and torturings, which degrade men’s natures, and give them a relish for scenes of blood and cruelty. ”

“ Then as to cruelty. This is of two kinds, intentional and unintentional. Intentional cruelty is purposely to give pain to another living being; and that is the greatest of all sins—the work of a devil rather than a man. You would say that no man could do such a thing; but men have done it often, and are daily doing it now. The inquisitors did it; many religious people did it in the name of their religion. Vivisectors do it; many schoolmasters do it habitually. All these people try to excuse their brutality by saying that it is the custom; ”

“ The innate sense of justice and injustice, of good and evil is beclouded in the popular mind. Some, besotted with terror, undergo unheard-of ills with abject and degrading resignation; others, a prey to headlong vertigo, mix actions of greatest nobility with deeds that are most reprehensible. Your vengeance fatedly begets incalculable misfortunes. No doubt there is now many a seigneur, who, merciless until recently, does now conduct himself with less cruelty towards his slaves, as a consequence of the terror with which you inspire him. ”

“ Not to prolong so shocking a description beyond the length unavoidably necessary to its perfect comprehension, it must suffice to say, the cruelty is extended by every means that can possibly assist the cause. ”

“ Inflicting, we are prone to cruelty, as you have seen a schoolmaster begin punishment with tears, grow angry at the shrinking back under his cane, and give way to a sudden lust of torture. I have little pity for those who can help themselves—let them fight or eat the leek ”

“ Seeing, then, that in every act of cruelty or violence it is more than likely that either one or other of these factors has been at work, is it fair that we should so readily condemn and therewith rest content? ”

“ It is now known, and every year sees the fact more generally acknowledged, that they were treated with a cruelty as unjust, unnecessary, and unwise as it was brutal. The brutality may be excused in part as the universal sin of the age. ”

“ Every new case of cruelty is seized upon with avidity, and exultingly paraded before the public. This looks a little too pharisaical. 'Lord I thank thee that I am not as other men are; nor like unto these wicked slaveholders,' seems to beam from some men's countenances. ”

“ Cruelty, if we consider it as a crime, is the greatest of all: but I think we should more justly consider it, in men of education, as a madness; ”

“ If, however, he not only delights in human blood, but feeds upon it; if he exercises his insatiable cruelty in the torture of persons of all ages, and his fury is not prompted by anger, but by a sort of delight in cruelty, if he cuts the throats of children before the eyes of their parents ”

“ From these few instances of savage cruelty, the deplorable situation of the defenseless inhabitants, and what they hourly suffered in that part of the globe, must strike the utmost horror, and cause in every breast the utmost detestation, not only against the authors, but against those who, through inattention, or pusillanimous or erroneous principles, suffered these savages at first, unrepelled, or even unmolested, to commit such outrages, depredations and murders. ”