Cruelty Quotes - Page 12

• Memories did one no good, not when one knew the truth in the present. Will was beautiful, but he was not hers; he was anybody's. Something in him was broken, and trough that break spilled a blind cruelty, a need to hurt and to push away.

  Cassandra Clare

  Beautiful, Hurt, Memories

  Cassandra Clare (2013). “The Infernal Devices: Clockwork Angel; Clockwork Prince; Clockwork Princess”, p.473, Simon and Schuster

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• Cruelty does not make a person dishonest, the same way bravery does not make a person kind.

  Veronica Roth

  Bravery, Doe, Way

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• Unlimited power in the hands of limited people always leads to cruelty.

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  Hands, People, Unlimited

  David Mitchell (2012). “Cloud Atlas (Enhanced Movie Tie-in Edition): A Novel”, p.185, Random House Group

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• Johannes had once said that violence and cruelty were just a stupid person's way of making himself felt, because it was easer to use your hands to strike a blow than to use your brain to find a logical and just solution to the problem.

  Anne Holm

  Stupid, Blow, Hands

  Anne Holm (1965). “North to freedom”

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• When lenity and cruelty play for a kingdom, the gentler gamester is the soonest winner

  William Shakespeare

  Memorable, Play, Justice

  William Shakespeare, Andrew Gurr (2005). “King Henry V”, p.147, Cambridge University Press

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• Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.

  Adam Smith

  Patriotic, Government, Libertarian

  Adam Smith (2012). “The Theory of Moral Sentiments”, p.89, Courier Corporation

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• That's the trouble with the world we live in. It's full of people just doing their job and ignoring what's really going on. Care about the rainforest until they get a couple of kids and enough money for a gas guzzling car, or some hardwood dining furniture. Watch all those wildlife programmes and coo over the furry animals, but still eat meat and poultry that was raised in conditions of unbelievable cruelty.

  Robert Muchamore

  Jobs, Couple, Kids

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• I used to think that cruelty required malice, but that is not true. Jeanine has no reason to act out of malice. But she is cruel because she doesn't care what she does, as long as it fascinates her. I may as well be a puzzle or a broken machine she wants to fix. She will break open my skull just to see the inner workings of my brain; I will die here, and that will be the merciful thing.

  Veronica Roth

  Thinking, Skulls, Long

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• The underlying struggle - between worlds of plenty and worlds of want; between the modern and the ancient; between those who embrace our teeming, colliding, irksome diversity, while still insisting on a set of values that binds us together, and those who would seek, under whatever flag or slogan or sacred text, a certainty and simplification that justifies cruelty toward those not like us.

  Barack Obama

  Struggle, Diversity, Together

  Barack Obama (2007). “Dreams From My Father”, p.10, Canongate Books

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• I think cruelty is just loneliness disguised as bitterness.

  Tom Hiddleston

  Loneliness, Thinking, Bitterness

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• Misfortune is no excuse for cruelty.

  Ned Vizzini

  No Excuses, Excuse, Misfortunes

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• Women: I liked the colors of their clothing; the way they walked; the cruelty in some faces; now and then the almost pure beauty in another face, totally and enchantingly female. They had it over us: they planned much better and were better organized. While men were watching professional football or drinking beer or bowling, they, the women, were thinking about us, concentrating, studying, deciding - whether to accept us, discard us, exchange us, kill us or whether simply to leave us. In the end it hardly mattered; no matter what they did, we ended up lonely and insane.

  Charles Bukowski

  Football, Lonely, Drinking

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• We have a strange illusion that mere time cancels sin. I have heard others, and I have heard myself, recounting cruelties and falsehoods committed in boyhood as if they were no concern of the present speaker's, and even with laughter. But mere time does nothing either to the fact or to the guilt of a sin. The guilt is washed out not by time but by repentance and the blood of Christ: if we have repented these early sins we should remember the price of our forgiveness and be humble.

  C. S. Lewis

  Laughter, Humble, Blood

  C. S. Lewis (2003). “A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis”, p.105, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• We think of it as a sort of traffic accident of the heart. It is an emotion that scares us more than cruelty, more than violence, more than hatred. We allow ourselves to be foiled by the vagueness of the word. After all, love requires the utmost vulnerability. We equip someone with freshly sharpened knives; strip naked; then invite him to stand close. What could be scarier?

  Diane Ackerman

  Heart, Thinking, Knives

  Diane Ackerman (2011). “A Natural History of Love: Author of the National Bestseller A Natural History of the Senses”, p.20, Vintage

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• Something in him was broken, and through that break spilled a blind cruelty, a need to hurt and to push away

  Cassandra Clare

  Hurt, Broken, Needs

  Cassandra Clare (2013). “Clockwork Prince”, p.11, Simon and Schuster

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• Cruelty isn't a personality trait. Cruelty is a habit.

  Rick Yancey

  Personality, Habit, Traits

  Rick Yancey (2013). “The 5th Wave”, p.132, Penguin

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• In her smile, Idris sees how little of the world he has known, even at thirty-five years of age, its savageness, its cruelty, its boundless brutality.

  Khaled Hosseini

  Years, Age, Brutality

  Khaled Hosseini (2013). “And the Mountains Echoed”, p.153, A&C Black

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• When you have lived as long as I have, the div replied, you find that cruelty and benevolence are but shades of the same color.

  Khaled Hosseini

  Color, Long, Shade

  Khaled Hosseini (2013). “And the Mountains Echoed”, p.12, A&C Black

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• Even the most sensitive person can get used to even the most insensitive thing. Cruelty isn’t a personality trait. Cruelty is a habit.

  Rick Yancey

  Sensitive Person, Personality, Habit

  Rick Yancey (2013). “The 5th Wave”, p.132, Penguin

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• Cruelty is easy, cheap and rampant.

  Brené Brown

  Easy

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• 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.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Dog, Nature, Greatness

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• She was the storm, she was the lightning, she was the adult world with all its power and all its secrets and all its foolish casual cruelty.

  Neil Gaiman

  Secret, Storm, Lightning

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• There is cruelty in the world Eliza, you can see that, can't you? It surrounds us. It breathes on us. We spend our life trying to escape it.

  John Boyne

  Trying, World, Breathe

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• Magnus began to be truly alarmed. Will's voice would have shaken, betraying that his cruelty had been part of his playacting, but his son's laugh was that of someone genuinely delighted by the chaos erupting all around him

  Cassandra Clare

  Son, Voice, Laughing

  Cassandra Clare, Sarah Rees Brennan, Maureen Johnson (2014). “The Bane Chronicles”, p.159, Simon and Schuster

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• [Luke, holding stormtrooper helmet.] Alas, poor stormtrooper, I knew ye not,/ yet have I taken both uniform and life/ From thee. What manner of a man wert thou?/ A man of inf'nite jest or cruelty?/ A man with helpmate and with children too?/ A man who hath his Empire serv'd with pride?/ A man, perhaps, who wish'd for perfect peace?/ What'er thou wert, goodman, thy pardon grant/ Unto the one who took thy place: e'en me.

  Ian Doescher

  Children, Taken, Pride

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