Cruelty Quotes

“Man is the cruelest animal.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“People speak sometimes about the "bestial" cruelty of man, but that is terribly unjust and offensive to beasts, no animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“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

“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 / Inkspell / Inkdeath

“Evil begins when you begin to treat people as things.”
― Terry Pratchett, I Shall Wear Midnight

“Anger, resentment and jealousy doesn't change the heart of others-- it only changes yours.”
― Shannon Alder, 300 Questions to Ask Your Parents Before It's Too Late

“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

“Thus it is that no cruelty whatsoever passes by without impact. Thus it is that we always pay dearly for chasing after what is cheap.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

“The assumption that animals are without rights and the illusion that our treatment of them has no moral significance is a positively outrageous example of Western crudity and barbarity. Universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, The Basis of Morality

“All cruelty springs from weakness.”
― Seneca, Seneca's Morals: Of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency

“He who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men. We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals.”
― Emmanuel Kant

“True beauty is something that attacks, overpowers, robs, and finally destroys.”
― Yukio Mishima

“Compassion for animals is intimately associated with goodness of character, and it may be confidently asserted that he who is cruel to animals cannot be a good man.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, The Basis of Morality

“We keep on being told that religion, whatever its imperfections, at least instills morality. On every side, there is conclusive evidence that the contrary is the case and that faith causes people to be more mean, more selfish, and perhaps above all, more stupid.”
― Christopher Hitchens

“There will always be someone willing to hurt you, put you down, gossip about you, belittle your accomplishments and judge your soul. It is a fact that we all must face. However, if you realize that God is a best friend that stands beside you when others cast stones you will never be afraid, never feel worthless and never feel alone.”
― Shannon Alder

“Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.”
― Bertrand Russell, Unpopular Essays

“I've always loved strong women, which is lucky for me because once you're over about twenty-five there is no other kind. Women blow my mind. The stuff that routinely gets done to them would make most men curl up and die, but women turn to steel and keep on coming. Any man who claims he's not into strong women is fooling himself mindless; he's into strong women who know how to pout prettily and put on baby voices, and who will end up keeping his balls in her makeup bags.”
― Tana French, Faithful Place

“A best friend is the only one that walks into your life when the world has walked out.”
― Shannon l. Alder

“I must be cruel only to be kind;
Thus bad begins, and worse remains behind.”
― William Shakespeare , Hamlet

“All cruel people describe themselves as paragons of frankness.”
― Tennessee Williams

“There must have been a moment, at the beginning, where we could have said -- no. But somehow we missed it.”
― Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

“All gods who receive homage are cruel. All gods dispense suffering without reason. Otherwise they would not be worshipped. Through indiscriminate suffering men know fear and fear is the most divine emotion. It is the stones for altars and the beginning of wisdom. Half gods are worshipped in wine and flowers. Real gods require blood.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

“It is from the Bible that man has learned cruelty, rapine, and murder; for the belief of a cruel God makes a cruel man.”
― Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason

“I hurt myself deeply, though at the time I had no idea how deeply. I should have learned many things from that experience, but when I look back on it, all I gained was one single, undeniable fact. That ultimately I am a person who can do evil. I never consciously tried to hurt anyone, yet good intentions notwithstanding, when necessity demanded, I could become completely self-centred, even cruel. I was the kind of person who could, using some plausible excuse, inflict on a person I cared for a wound that would never heal.”
― Haruki Murakami, South of the Border, West of the Sun

“The only thing crueler than a cage so
small that a bird can’t fly is a cage so
large that a bird thinks it can fly.”
― Caroline Kepnes, You

“Some things are not forgiveable. Deliberate cruelty is not forgiveable. It is the most unforgiveable thing in my opinion, and the one thing in which I have never, ever been guilty.”
― Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire

“Emotion without reason lets people walk all over you; reason without emotion is a mask for cruelty.”
― Nalini Singh, Archangel's Kiss

“Something caught in her throat at this second thanks, when she'd threatened him so brutally. When you're a monster, she thought, you are thanked and praised for not behaving like a monster. She would like to restrain from cruelty and receive no admiration for it.”
― Kristin Cashore, Graceling

“I think cruelty is just loneliness disguised as bitterness.”
― Tom Hiddleston

“Deliberate cruelty is unforgivable.

--Blanche Dubois”
― Tennessee Williams's, Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire