Cruelty Quotes - Page 36

• Savor kindness because cruelty is always possible later.

  Jenny Holzer

  Kindness

  Jenny Holzer, Stefan Banz, Thomas Whitridge, Béatrix Ruf (2001). “Jenny Holzer: xenon”

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• I wish no living thing to suffer pain.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Life, Pain, Compassion

  1820 Prometheus Unbound, act 1, l.303-5.

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• The Earth is beautiful, and bright, and kindly, but that is not all. The Earth is also terrible, and dark, and cruel. The rabbit shrieks dying in the green meadows. The mountains clench their great hands full of hidden fire. There are sharks in the sea, and there is cruelty in men's eyes.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Beautiful, Eye, Dark

  Ursula K. LeGuin (2015). “The Tombs of Atuan: The Second Book of Earthsea”, p.53, Hachette UK

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• Most of the cruelty in the world is just misplaced energy.

  Zadie Smith

  Energy, World, Misplaced

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• It is from the Bible that man has learned cruelty, rapine, and murder; for the belief of a cruel God makes a cruel man.

  Thomas Paine

  Men, Belief, Murder

  Thomas Paine (2011). “The Age of Reason”, p.119, Broadview Press

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• Sin is cruelty and injustice, all else is peccadillo. Oh, a sense of sin comes from violating the customs of your tribe. But breaking custom is not sin even when it feels so; sin is wronging another person.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Tribes, Injustice, Sin

  Robert A. Heinlein (2007). “Glory Road”, p.144, Macmillan

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• Slaughter and justice cannot dwell together.

  Isaac Bashevis Singer

  Animal, Vegetarianism, Justice

  "Animal life in Jewish tradition: attitudes and relationships". Book by Elijah Judah Schochet, p. 297, 1984.

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• 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.

  Niccolo Machiavelli

  Men, Evil, Done

  Niccolo Machiavelli (1979). “The Portable Machiavelli”, p.75, Penguin

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• The mystery of life--its inexplicability, beauty, cruelty, tenderness, folly . . . has occupied the greater part of my waking thoughts; and in reverence or rage or irony, as the moment or situation might dictate, I have pondered and even demanded of cosmic energy to know Why.

  Theodore Dreiser

  Energy, Might, Waking

  Theodore Dreiser (1977). “Theodore Dreiser: a selection of uncollected prose”, Wayne State Univ Pr

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• For a politics of emancipation, the enemy that is to be feared most is not repression at the hands of the established order. It is the interiority of nihilism, and the unbounded cruelty that can come with its emptiness.

  Alain Badiou

  Hands, Order, Enemy

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• If you hit a Talib, then there would be no difference between you and the Talib. You must not treat others with cruelty. You must fight others through peace and through dialogue and through education.

  Malala Yousafzai

  Fighting, Differences, Would Be

  "How Malala, Teen Activist Shot By Taliban, Made Jon Stewart’s Jaw Drop" by Eleanor Goldberg, www.huffingtonpost.com. October 9, 2013.

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• But you are involved in the world, and your actions have consequences for other people, and if you don't recognize that, then that's the supreme kind of cruelty. Everyone shares someone else's fate to some extent.

  Malcolm Bradbury

  Fate, Actions Have Consequences, People

  Malcolm Bradbury (2012). “Eating People is Wrong”, p.172, Pan Macmillan

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• We have abolished human bondage because it cursed those who imposed it. It is now our bounden duty to oppose cruelty to those creatures of our common Father which share with man the mystery of life.

  S. Parkes Cadman

  Father, Animal, Men

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• In the killing of animals there is cruelty, rage, and the accustoming of oneself to the bad habit of shedding innocent blood.

  Joseph Albo

  Animal, Blood, Killing

  Joseph Albo (1929). “ספר העקרים: book of principles”, [Philadelphia

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• To see the convulsions, agonies and tortures of a poor fellow-creature, whom they cannot restore nor recompense, dying to gratify luxury and tickle callous and rank organs, must require a rocky heart, and a great degree of cruelty and ferocity. I cannot find any great difference between feeding on human flesh and feeding on animal flesh, except custom and practice.

  George Cheyne

  Heart, Animal, Practice

  "An Essay on Regimen: Together with Five Discourses, Medical, Moral, and Philosophical". Book by George Cheyne, 1740.

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• An infallible characteristic of meanness is cruelty. Men who have practiced tortures on animals without pity, relating them without shame, how can they still hold their heads among human beings?

  Samuel Johnson

  Animal, Men, Shame

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• The habit of shedding blood, or even of seeing it shed, corrupts all sentiment of humanity.

  Constantin-Francois Chasseboeuf

  Animal, Compassion, Blood

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• Human dignity begins to assert itself only at the point where man is distinguishable from the beast by pity for it.

  Richard Wagner

  Animal, Men, Compassion

  Richard Wagner (1897). “Religion and Art”, p.210, U of Nebraska Press

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• Once admit that we have the right to inflict unnecessary suffering and you destroy the very basis of human society.

  John Galsworthy

  Animal, Compassion, Suffering

  John Galsworthy (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of John Galsworthy (Illustrated)”, p.7260, Delphi Classics

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• In plain terms, a child is a complicated creature who can drive you crazy. There's a cruelty to childhood, there's an anger.

  Maurice Sendak

  Children, Crazy, Anger

  "'Wild Things' author isn't wild about Hollywood" by Jake Coyle, www.today.com. October 13, 2009.

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• I suppose I walk that line between comedy and cruelty because I think one illuminates the other. We're all cruel, aren't we? We are all extreme in one way or another at times and that's what drama, since the Greeks, has dealt with. I hope the overall view isn't just that though, or I've failed in my writing. There have to be moments when you glimpse something decent, something life-affirming even in the most twisted character. That's where the real art lies.

  Martin McDonagh

  Art, Real, Drama

  "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Other people are as alive as you are. Cruelty is a failure of imagination.

  Noah Richler

  People, Imagination, Alive

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• Life has shown me all too often that there is no rhyme or reason to the cruelty inflicted upon humanity.

  Cassia Leo

  Humanity, Reason, Rhyme

  Cassia Leo (2014). “Black Box”, p.17, Random House

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• Since you walked out on me I'm getting lovelier by the hour. I glow like a corpse in the dark. No one sees how round and sharp my eyes have grown how my carcass looks like a glass urn, how I hold up things in the rags of my hands, the way I can stand through crippled by lust. No, there's just your cruelty circling my head like a bright rotting halo.

  Nina Cassian

  Broken Heart, Eye, Dark

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• The business of love is cruelty which, by our wills, we transform to live together.

  William Carlos Williams

  Broken Heart, Love Is, Together

  William Carlos Williams (1967). “Pictures from Brueghel, and Other Poems: Collected Poems, 1950-1962”, p.125, New Directions Publishing

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