Cruelty Quotes - Page 3

• All cruelty springs from weakness.

  Seneca the Younger

  Spring, Philosophical, Animal

  "On the Happy Life". Essay by Seneca the Younger (58 AD); later published in Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton "Caxtoniana: A Series of Essays on Life, Literature, and Manners", p. 174 (in the essay "The Sympathetic Temperment"), 1863.

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• It is cruelty to be humane to rebels, and humanity is cruelty.

  Robert Burns

  Humanity, Rebel, Humane

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• The truth doesn't have to do with cruelty, the truth has to do with mercy.

  Ken Kesey

  Literature, Mercy

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• Unless we have courage to recognize cruelty for what it is - whether its victim is human or animal - we cannot expect things to be much better in the world.

  Rachel Carson

  Animal, Vegetarianism, World

  "Rachel Carson: Legacy and Challenge", ed. Lisa H. Sideris and Kathleen Dean Moore Albany: State University of New York Press, (p. 102), 2008.

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• Group conformity scares the pants off me because it's so often a prelude to cruelty towards anyone who doesn't want to - or can't - join the Big Parade.

  Bette Midler

  Scare, Groups, Want

  Bette Midler (1980). “A View from a Broad”, Simon & Schuster

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• Today there's more fellowship among snakes than among mankind. Wild beasts spare those with similar markings.

  Juvenal

  Snakes, Fellowship, Today

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• When I was twelve, I went hunting with my father and we shot a bird. He was laying there and something struck me. Why do we call this fun to kill this creature [who] was as happy as I was when I woke up this morning.

  Marv Levy

  Morning, Fun, Father

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• If the cruelties of slavery could not stop us, the opposition we now face will surely fail. Because the goal of America is freedom, abused and scorned tho' we may be, our destiny is tied up with America's destiny.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Freedom, Destiny, America

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• Cruelty and wrong are not the greatest forces in the world. There is nothing eternal in them. Only love is eternal.

  Elisabeth Elliot

  Inspiring, Love Is, World

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

  George Bernard Shaw

  Hurt, Would Be, Delicious

  George Bernard Shaw (2015). “The Collected Works of George Bernard Shaw: Plays, Novels, Articles, Lectures, Letters and Essays: Pygmalion, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Candida, Arms and The Man, Man and Superman, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion, The New York Times Articles on War, Memories of Oscar Wilde and more”, p.3686, e-artnow

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• Even bear-baiting was esteemed heathenish and unchristian: the sport of it, not the inhumanity, gave offence.

  Alexander Hume

  Sports, Bears, Unchristian

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• Farewell, fair cruelty.

  William Shakespeare

  Inspirational, Funny, Farewell

  William Shakespeare, George Steevens (1824). “The Dramatic Works of William Shakespeare”, p.78

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• 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

  Character, Animal, Men

  Arthur Schopenhauer (2016). “101 Facts of life”, p.15, Publishdrive

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• Deliberate cruelty to our defenceless and beautiful little cousins is surely one of the meanest and most detestable vices of which a human being can be guilty.

  William Ralph Inge

  Beautiful, Cousin, Animal

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• If you have men who will exclude any of God's creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men.

  Francis of Assisi

  Religious, Peace, Men

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• When we think of cruelty, we must try to remember the stupidity, the envy, the frustration from which it has arisen.

  Edith Sitwell

  Frustration, Thinking, Envy

  Edith Sitwell (2011). “Taken Care Of: An Autobiography”, p.172, A&C Black

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• If a man aspires towards a righteous life, his first act of abstinence is from injury to animals.

  Albert Einstein

  Zoos, Cat, Animal

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• Idle people are often bored and bored people, unless they sleep a lot, are cruel. It is not accident that boredom and cruelty are great preoccupations in our time.

  Renata Adler

  Sleep, Blessing, Boredom

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• Of all the animals, man is the only one that lies.

  Mark Twain

  Honesty, Lying, Animal

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  All cruel people describe themselves as paragons of frankness.

  Tennessee Williams

  Truth, Honesty, People

  Tennessee Williams (1971). “The Theatre of Tennessee Williams: The milk train doesn't stop here anymore. Kingdom of Earth (The seven descents of Myrtle). Small craft warnings. The two-character play”, p.10, New Directions Publishing

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• Humanity's true moral test, its fundamental test…consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals.

  Milan Kundera

  Attitude, Compassion, Animal

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• Children know how to be cruel, and the cruelty of their elders is the surest residue of the malaise the young feel toward things strange, things other, things that reveal our own ignorance or insufficiency

  Carlos Fuentes

  Children, Ignorance, Strange

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• The theatre breeds its own kind of cruelty, and its sadism takes on a keener edge since it can be enjoyed under the innocent guise of critical judgment.

  Moss Hart

  Theatre, Sadism, Kind

  moss hart (1959). “act one”

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• The difference between coarse and refined abuse is the difference between being bruised by a club and wounded by a poisoned arrow.

  Samuel Johnson

  Differences, Arrows, Abuse

  Samuel Johnson, James Boswell (1825). “The Table Talk of Dr. Johnson: Comprising Opinions and Anecdotes of Life and Literature, Men, Manners, and Morals”, p.160

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• An infallible characteristic of meanness is cruelty.

  Samuel Johnson

  Characteristics, Meanness, Infallible

  Samuel Johnson (1819). “The Beauties of Samuel Johnson: Consisting of Maxims and Observations, Moral, Critical, and Miscellaneous”, p.186

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