Cruelty Quotes

My idea of our civilization is that it is a shoddy, poor thing and full of cruelties, vanities, arrogances, meannesses and hypocrisies.

But are there many honest people who will admit that it is pleasing to give pain?

Farewell, fair cruelty.

Women have a hard enough time in this world: telling them the truth would be too cruel.

It is impossible to found a civilization on fear and hatred and cruelty. It would never endure.' 'Why not?' 'It would have no vitality. It would disintegrate. It would commit suicide.

Killing animals for sport, for pleasure, for adventure, and for hides and furs is a phenomena which is at once disgusting and distressing. There is no justification in indulging is such acts of brutality.

Why did they make birds so delicate and fine as those sea swallows when the ocean can be so cruel?

I knew a pure heart who refused tot be mistrustful.... He had written at his doorstep: "From wherever you are, enter and be welcome". Who do you think responded to this lovely invitation? The militia, who made themselves at home and gutted him.

You can be good for the mere sake of goodness; you cannot be bad for the mere sake of badness. You can do a kind action when you are not feeling kind and when it gives you no pleasure, simply because kindness is right; but no one ever did a cruel action simply because cruelty is wrong - only because cruelty is pleasant or useful to him, In other words, badness cannot succeed even in being bad in the same way in which goodness is good. Goodness is, so to speak, itself: badness is only spoiled goodness. And there must be something good first before it can be spoiled.

When a uniform exercise of kindness to prisoners on our part has been returned by as uniform severity on the part of our enemies,you must excuse me for saying it is high time, by other lessons, to teach respect to the dictates of humanity; in such a case, retaliation becomes an act of benevolence.

Cruelty would be delicious if one could only find some sort of cruelty that didn't really hurt.

Religious canons, civil laws, are cruel; then what should war be?

Truly man is the king of beasts, for his brutality exceeds them. We live by the death of others. We are burial places.

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.

There is something in meanness which excites a species of resentment that never subsides, and something in cruelty which stirs up the heart to the highest agony of human hatred.

When cruelty is inflicted on innocent people, it discredits whatever cause.

[T]he moralists of Europe [have] pretended that beasts have no rights... a doctrine revolting/gross/barbarous... on which a native of the Asiatic uplands could not look without righteous horror.

Nothing shocks our moral feelings so deeply as cruelty does. We can forgive every other crime, but not cruelty. The reason for this is that it is the very opposite of compassion.

I must be cruel only to be kind; Thus bad begins, and worse remains behind.

If we cut up beasts simply because they cannot prevent us and because we are backing our own side in the struggle for existence, it is only logical to cut up imbeciles, criminals, enemies, or capitalists for the same reasons.

We manage to swallow flesh only because we do not think of the cruel and sinful thing that we do. There are many crimes which are the creation of man himself, the wrongfulness of which is put down to their divergence from habit, custom, or tradition. But cruelty is not of these. It is a fundamental sin, and admits of no argument or nice distinctions. 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, anyone who does not join in is dubbed a crank.

Be wise as thou art cruel, do not press My tongue-tied patience with too much disdain: Lest sorrow lend me words and words express, The manner of my pity-wanting pain.

Dissembling courtesy! How fine this tyrant can trickle when she wounds!

Look at World War II, at Hitler's cruelty. The more cruelty, the more enthusiasm for revolution.

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.

Without cruelty there is no festival: thus the longest and most ancient part of human history teaches and in punishment there is so much that is festive!

World's use is cold, world's love is vain, world's cruelty is bitter bane; but is not the fruit of pain.

We manage to swallow flesh, only because we do not think of the cruel and sinful thing we do.

The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated. I hold that the more helpless a creature the more entitled it is to protection by man from the cruelty of humankind.

To see others suffer does one good, to make others suffer even more: this is a hard saying but an ancient, mighty, human, all-too-human principle [....] Without cruelty there is no festival.

Whoever possesses the will to suffering within himself has a different attitude towards cruelty: he does not regard it as inherently harmful and bad.

It is just like man's vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions. Heaven is by favor; if it were by merit your dog would go in and you would stay out. Of all the creatures ever made he (man) is the most detestable. Of the entire brood, he is the only one...that possesses malice. He is the only creature that inflicts pain for sport, knowing it to be pain. The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to the other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot.

Thou art as tyrannous, so as thou art, As those whose beauties proudly make them cruel; For well thou know'st to my dear doting heart Thou art the fairest and most precious jewel.

O tiger's heart wrapped in a woman's hide!

Nature appears to have been the cruel stepmother rather than the mother of many animals.

O my brothers, am I then cruel? But I say: that which is falling should also be pushed!

Man is the only animal that is cruel. It kills just for the sake of it.

The death sentence is a barbaric act.

Who can attain to anything great if he does not feel in himself the force and will to inflict great pain?

Of all the black crimes that humanity is committing against the great Creation, vivisection is the blackest.

People talk sometimes of a 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. The tiger only tears and gnaws, that's all he can do. He would never think of nailing people by the ears, even if he were able to do it.

The quivering, ardent sunlight showed him the lines of cruelty round the mouth as clearly as if he had been looking into a mirror after he had done some dreadful thing.

Blow, blow, thou winter wind Thou art not so unkind, As man's ingratitude.

A prince, therefore, must not mind incurring the charge of cruelty for the purpose of keeping his subjects united and confident; for, with a very few examples, he will be more merciful than those who, from excess of tenderness, allow disorders to arise, from whence spring murders and rapine; for these as a rule injure the whole community, while the executions carried out by the prince injure only one individual. And of all princes, it is impossible for a new prince to escape the name of cruel, new states being always full of dangers.

The new ruler must determine all the injuries that he will need to inflict. He must inflict them once and for all.

The schoolmaster is the person who takes the children off the parents' hands for a consideration. That is to say, he establishes a child prison, engages a number of employee schoolmasters as turnkeys, and covers up the essential cruelty and unnaturalness of the situation by torturing the children if they do not learn, and calling this process, which is within the capacity of any fool or blackguard, by the sacred name of Teaching.

Men are the devils of the earth, and the animals are its tormented souls.

Only the weak are cruel. Gentleness can only be expected from the strong.

I wish I were the Commander in Chief in India... I should do my utmost to exterminate the Race upon whom the stain of the late cruelties rested.

The worst slave owners were those who were kind to their slaves

Well used are those cruelties (if it is permitted to speak well of evil) that are carried out in a single stroke, done out of necessity to protect oneself, and are not continued but are instead converted into the greatest possible benefits for the subjects. Badly used are those cruelties which. although being few at the outset, grow with the passing time instead of disappearing. Those who follow the first method can remedy their condition with God and with men; the others cannot possibly survive.

The thinking man must oppose all cruelties no matter how deeply rooted in tradition or surrounded by a halo.

Military necessity does not admit of cruelty - that is, the infliction of suffering for the sake of suffering or for revenge, . . . nor of torture to extort confessions.

Cruel people are ever cowards in emergency.

There is in man a specific lust for cruelty which infects even his passion of pity and makes it savage.

Once you fall, Septimus repeated to himself, human nature is on you. Holmes and Bradshaw are on you. They scour the desert. They fly screaming into the wilderness. The rack and the thumbscrew are applied. Human nature is remorseless.

Nature is pitiless; she never withdraws her flowers, her music, her fragrance, and her sunlight from before human cruelty or suffering.

But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes, Feed'st thy light's flame with self-substantial fuel, Making a famine where abundance lies, Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel.

He who sees cruelty and does nothing about it is himself cruel.

Fear is cruel and mean.