Cruelty Quotes

“Farewell, fair cruelty.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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!”

“She speaks poniards, and every word stabs.”

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

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

“No beast so fierce but knows some touch of pity. But I know none, and therefore am no beast.”

“Tis a cruelty to load a fallen man.”

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

“There is no more mercy in him than there is milk in a male tiger.”

“Fear is cruel and mean.”

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

“Men are in general so tricky, so envious, and so cruel that when we find one who is only weak, we are too happy.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Perhaps in nearly every joy, as certainly in every pleasure, cruelty has its place.”

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

“Human beings can be awful cruel to one another.”

“The vast majority of the race whether savage or civilized, are secretly kind at heart and shrink from inflicting pain, but in the presence of the aggressive and pitiless minority they don't dare to assert themselves.”

“I never came across anyone in whom the moral sense was dominant who was not heartless, cruel, vindictive, log-stupid, and entirely lacking in the smallest sense of humanity. Moral people, as they are termed, are simple beasts.”