Popular quotes about Cruelty! Wisdom and inspiration are here!
For woman's chief want is to feel that she is wanted. Therefore it is that with women, cruelty is more easily borne than coldness. Indeed, It is astonishing how much downright cruelty a woman will stand from the man she loves or has loved. What women admire is a subtle combination of forcefulness and gentleness. If a woman has to choose between forcefulness and gentleness, always she will sacrifice the latter.
Arnold HaultainThe very good people didn't convince me; I felt they'd never been tempted. But you knew; you understood; you had felt the world outside tugging at one with all its golden hands โ and yet you hated the things it asks of one; you hated happiness bought by disloyalty and cruelty and indifference.
Edith WhartonIt struck him that the truly characteristic thing about modern life was not its cruelty and insecurity, but simply its bareness, its dinginess, its listlessness. Life, if you looked about you, bore no resemblance not only to the lies that streamed out of the telescreens, but even to the ideals that the party was trying to achieve.
George OrwellTo punish the oppressors of humanity is clemency; to forgive them is cruelty.
Maximilien RobespierreI can not help it; as I draw near to you, you, in your turn will draw near to others, and learn the rapture of that cruelty, which yet is love; so, for a while, seek to know no more of me and mine, but trust me with all your loving spirit.
Joseph Sheridan Le FanuIf experience be consulted, it will be found there is no action, however abominable, that has not received the applause of some people. Parricide - the sacrifice of children - robbery - usurpation - cruelty - intolerance - prostitution, have all in their turn been licensed actions, and have been deemed laudable and meritorious deeds with some nations of the earth. Above all, Religion has consecrated the most unreasonable, the most revolting customs.
Baron d'HolbachI think that if people are instructed about anything, it should be about the nature of cruelty. And about why people behave so cruelly to each other. And what kind of satisfactions they derive from it. And why there is always a cost, and a price to be paid.
Richard RussoObjectification is a critical reason why an abuser tends to get worse over time. As his conscience adapts to one level of cruelty-he builds to the next. By depersonalizing his partner, the abuser protects himself from the natural human emotions of guilt and empathy, so that he can sleep at night with a clear conscience. He distances himself so far from her humanity that her feelings no longer count, or simply cease to exist.
Lundy BancroftShelters, conservationists, those concerned about unnecessary cruelty toward the animals we eat, and people working against species extinction fight to preserve the true riches of our planet, our real inheritance. These are big, critical goals.
April GornikCruelty, like every other vice, requires no motive outside of itself; it only requires opportunity.
George EliotI don't want to torture anything. It's about trying to live a life where I'm not contributing to the cruelty in the world... While I am on this planet, I want everyone I meet to know that I am grateful they are here.
Jessica ChastainI have seen a lifetime of transgender people and it was hard enough being gay in the '50s and early '60s. One couldn't imagine the cruelty that trans people had to face back then.
Patti SmithI feel the suffering of millions. And yet, when I look up at the sky, I somehow feel that every-thing will change for the better, that this cruelty too shall end, that peace and tranquility will return once more.
Anne FrankThe myth of hell represents all the meanness, all the revenge, all the selfishness, all the cruelty, all the hatred, all the infamy of which the heart of man is capable.
Robert Green IngersollThe vast carnival of cruelty called animal exploitation goes on and on - and it is all so needless, even counter-productive. There is already an adequate (often superior) non-animal substitute for virtually everything obtained by animal suffering and slaughter.
H. Jay DinshahHe doesn't have super powers or the biggest, baddest gun. The point isn't how many people you can kill or how you kill them. He is there to fight piracy, greed, and cruelty in all their forms on land and sea
Billy ZaneWhere does discipline end? Where does cruelty begin? Somewhere between these, thousands of children inhabit a voiceless hell.
Francois MauriacI cruelly hate cruelty, both by nature and reason, as the worst of all the vices. But then I am so soft in this that I cannot seea chicken's neck wrung without distress, and cannot bear to hear the squealing of a hare between the teeth of my hounds.
Michel de MontaigneThe underlying struggle - between worlds of plenty and worlds of want; between the modern and the ancient; between those who embrace our teeming, colliding, irksome diversity, while still insisting on a set of values that binds us together, and those who would seek, under whatever flag or slogan or sacred text, a certainty and simplification that justifies cruelty toward those not like us.
Barack ObamaNature is pitiless; she never withdraws her flowers, her music, her fragrance, and her sunlight from before human cruelty or suffering.
Victor HugoA few years ago the Deists denied the inspiration of the Bible on account of its cruelty. At the same time they worshiped what they were pleased to call the God of Nature. Now we are convinced that Nature is as cruel as the Bible; so that, if the God of Nature did not write the Bible, this God at least has caused earthquakes and pestilence and famine, and this God has allowed millions of his children to destroy one another. So that now we have arrived at the question - not as to whether the Bible is inspired and not as to whether Jehovah is the real God, but whether there is a God or not.
Robert Green Ingersoll[D]emocracy will soon degenerate into an anarchy, such an anarchy that every man will do what is right in his own eyes and no man's life or property or reputation or liberty will be secure, and every one of these will soon mould itself into a system of subordination of all the moral virtues and intellectual abilities, all the powers of wealth, beauty, wit and science, to the wanton pleasures, the capricious will, and the execrable cruelty of one or a very few.
John AdamsWhy do you keep reading a book? Usually to find out what happens. Why do you give up and stop reading it? There may be lots of reasons. But often the answer is you don't care what happens. So what makes the difference between caring and not caring? The author's cruelty. And the reader's sympathy...it takes a mean author to write a good story.
Gail Carson LevineRemember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to say that democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious, or less avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy. It is not true, in fact, and nowhere appears in history. Those passions are the same in all men, under all forms of simple government, and when unchecked, produce the same effects of fraud, violence, and cruelty.
John AdamsCompassion is a muscle that gets stronger with use, and the regular exercise of choosing kindness over cruelty would change us.
Jonathan Safran FoerA DIVINE IMAGE Cruelty has a human heart, And Jealousy a human face; Terror the human form divine, And Secresy the human dress. The human dress is forged iron, The human form a fiery forge, The human face a furnace sealed, The human heart its hungry gorge.
William BlakeThrough compassion it is possible to recognize that the craving for love that people feel resides also in our own hearts, that the cruelty the world knows all too well is also rooted in our own impulses. Through compassion we also sense our hope for forgiveness in our friends' eyes and our hatred in their bitter mouths. When they kill, we know that we could have done it; when they give life, we know that we can do the same. For a compassionate person nothing human is alien: no joy and no sorrow, no way of living and no way of dying.
Henri NouwenWhatever littleness and vanity is to be observed in the minds of women, it is, like the cruelty of butchers, a temper that is wrought into them by that life which they are taught and accustomed to lead.
William LawWhen we think of cruelty, we must try to remember the stupidity, the envy, the frustration from which it has arisen.
Edith SitwellWhy is there ever this perverse cruelty in humankind, that makes us hurt most those we love best?
Jacqueline CareyCruel men believe in a cruel god and use their belief to excuse their cruelty. Only kindly men believe in a kindly god, and they would be kindly in any case.
Bertrand RussellHabits of thought lead us to brush aside descriptions of cruelty to animals as emotional, for "animal-lovers only"; or if not that, then anyway the problem is so trivial in comparison to the problems of human beings that no sensible person could give it time and attention. This too is a prejudice - for how can one know that a problem is trivial until one has taken the time to examine its extent?
Peter SingerHere is the paradox of the thing we call freedom: the farther we wander from God and the more we try to break free from him, the more enchained we become. Every step we take away from Him leads us farther from the freedom of Jesus and closer to the cruelty of Cain.
Steven JamesThose who conduct themselves with morality, integrity and consistency need not fear the forces of inhumanity and cruelty.
Nelson MandelaI love something: and scarcely do I love it completely when the tyrant in me says: "I want that in sacrifice." This cruelty is in my entrails. Behold! I am evil.
Friedrich NietzscheIt is notorious that no war between countries elicits as much hate and cruelty as civil war, in which there is no lack of acquaintance between the two warring sides.
Erich FrommTo insult someone we call him 'bestial. For deliberate cruelty and nature, 'human' might be the greater insult.
Isaac AsimovDarkness is the fit hour for beasts of prey, and ignorance the natural dwelling place of cruelty.
Charles SpurgeonCruelty to dumb animals is one of the distinguishing vices of low and base minds. Wherever it is found, it is a certain mark of ignorance and meanness; a mark which all the external advantages of wealth, splendour, and nobility, cannot obliterate. It is consistent neither with learning nor true civility.
William Jones