#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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“The death sentence is a barbaric act . . . It is a reflection of the animal instinct still in human beings.”

“The death sentence is a barbaric act.”

“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 (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 worst slave owners were those who were kind to their slaves”

“Man is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities War. He is the only one that gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood and calm pulse to exterminate his kind. He is the only animal that for sordid wages will march out... and help to slaughter strangers of his own species who have done him no harm and with whom he has no quarrel.... And in the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood off his hands and works for the universal brotherhood of man with his mouth.”

“Cruelties should be committed all at once.”

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

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

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

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

“He who possesses greatness is cruel towards his secondary virtues and considerations.”

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

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

“King of the animals — as thou hast described him — I should rather say king of the beasts, thou being the greatest — because thou hast spared slaying them, in order that they may give thee their children for the benefit of the gullet, of which thou hast attempted to make a sepulchre for all animals; and I would say still more, if it were allowed me to speak the entire truth.”

“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.”

“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!”