"I think it's perfectly possible to explain how the universe came about without bringing God into it, but I don't know everything, and there may well be a God somewhere, hiding away. Actually, if he is keeping out of sight, it's because he's ashamed of his followers and all the cruelty and ignorance they're responsible for promoting in his name. If I were him, I'd want nothing to do with them."
— Philip Pullman

"The world was a terrible place, cruel, pitiless, dark as a bad dream. Not a good place to live. Only in books could you find pity, comfort, happiness - and love. Books loved anyone who opened them, they gave you security and friendship and didn't ask anything in return; they never went away, never, not even when you treated them badly."
— Cornelia Funke (Inkheart Trilogy: Inkheart, Inkspell, and Inkdeath)

"Man is the cruelest animal."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"April is the cruelest month, breeding
lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
memory and desire, stirring
dull roots with spring rain."
— T.S. Eliot (The Waste Land)

"Indeed, people speak sometimes about the "animal" cruelty of man, but that is terribly unjust and offensive to animals, no animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel."
— Fyodor Dostoevsky

"There must have been a moment, at the beginning, were we could have said -- no. But somehow we missed it. "
— Tom Stoppard (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead)

"Deliberate cruelty is unforgivable.

--Blanche Dubois"
— Tennessee Williams (Viva Modern Interpretations a Streetcar Named Desire)

"In fact, if one person is unkind to an animal it is considered to be cruelty, but where a lot of people are unkind to animals, especially in the name of commerce, the cruelty is condoned and, once large sums of money are at stake, will be defended to the last by otherwise intelligent people."
— Ruth Harrison, "Animal Machines"

"10 percent of any population is cruel, no matter what, and 10 percent is merciful, no matter what, and the remaining 80 percent can be moved in either direction."
— Susan Sontag

"I was helpless in trying to return people's kindness, but also helpless to resist it. Kindness is a scarier force than cruelty, that's for sure. Cruelty isn't that hard to understand. I had no trouble comprehending why the phone company wanted to screw me over; they just wanted to steal some money, it was nothing personal. That's the way of the world. It made me mad, but it didn't make me feel stupid. If anything, it flattered my intelligence. Accepting all that kindness, though, made me feel stupid.

Human benevolence is totally unfair. We don't live in a kind or generous world, yet we are kind and generous. We know the universe is out to burn us, and it gets us all the way it got Renee, but we don't burn each other, not always. We are kind people in an unkind world, to paraphrase Wallace Stevens. How do you pretend you don't know about it, after you see it? How do you go back to acting like you don't need it? How do you even the score and walk off a free man? You can't. I found myself forced to let go of all sorts of independence I thought I had, independence I had spent years trying to cultivate. That world was all gone, and now I was a supplicant, dependent on the mercy of other people's psychic hearts."
— Rob Sheffield (Love Is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time)

"I don't believe in the concept of hell, but if I did I would think of it as filled with people who were cruel to animals."
— Gary Larson

"The lamb misused breeds public strife
And yet forgives the butcher's knife."
— William Blake

"The truth is that every intelligent man, as you know, dreams of being a gangster and of ruling over society by force alone. As it is not so easy as the detective novels might lead one to believe, one generally relies on politics and joins the cruelest party.What does it matter, after all, if by humiliating one's mind one succeeds in dominating every one? I discovered in myself sweet dreams of oppression."
— Albert Camus (The Fall)

""In fact, if one person is unkind to an animal it is considered to be cruelty, but where a lot of people are unkind to animals, especially in the name of commerce, the cruelty is condoned and, once large sums of money are at stake, will be defended to the last by otherwise intelligent people."
"
— — Ruth Harrison "Animal Machines"

"the story is not a pretty one. there is violence in it. And cruelty. But stories that are not pretty have a certain value, too, I suppose. Everything, as you well know (having lived in this world long enough to have figured out a thing or two for yourself), cannont always be sweetness and light."
— Kate DiCamillo (The Tale of Despereaux: Being the Story of a Mouse, a Princess, Some Soup and a Spool of Thread)

"I, on the other hand, interrupt people because my thoughts fly out of my mouth. My handbag's full of rubbish. And I want to do something that matters with my life. Right now I'd like to write plays, sing in musicals, and/or rid the world of poverty, violence, cruelty, and right-wing conservative politics."
— Alison Larkin (The English American: A Novel)

"I looked in vain for LaRoue, my cruelty toward her now in me like a splinter, where it would sit for years in my helpless memory, the skin growing around; what else can memory do? It can do nothing; It pretends to eat the shrapnel of your acts, yet it cannot swallow or chew."
— Lorrie Moore (Who Will Run the Frog Hospital)

""Done any more robberies?" he asked with a nervous grin.
"You look a right berk," I told him, ignoring his question. I'd learnt from Tam that cruelty was an effective method against sadness. I'd cried much less since I'd known her. "
— Helen Cross (My Summer of Love)

""Done any more robberies?" he asked with a nervous grin.
"You look a right berk," I told him, ignoring his question. I'd learnt from Tam that cruelty was an effective method against saddness. I'd cried much less since I'd known her. "
— Helen Cross (My Summer of Love)