Cruelty Quotes - Page 17

• Summer is a Latvian chicken. We make foolish choices. We think we’re young again. We run with outstretched arms toward an object of love and it pecks us and pecks us until we’re standing there snot-nosed and teary in the middle of Astor Place and the sun sets fire to our Penguin shirts and all that is left to do is go to our air-conditioned homes and ponder the cruelty of our finest season.

  Gary Shteyngart

  Summer, Running, Home

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• She had borne so long the cruelty of belonging to him and not being claimed by him.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Long, Belonging

  "Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence".

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• I hurt myself deeply, though at the time I had no idea how deeply. I should have learned many things from that experience, but when I look back on it, all I gained was one single, undeniable fact. That ultimately I am a person who can do evil. I never consciously tried to hurt anyone, yet good intentions notwithstanding, when necessity demanded, I could become completely self-centred, even cruel. I was the kind of person who could, using some plausible excuse, inflict on a person I cared for a wound that would never heal.

  Haruki Murakami

  Hurt, Ideas, Self

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• He lacked tenderness; he was rude; and he had more than a streak of cruelty in him; he was a thief and a liar. He stood for everything she feared and hated and despised; but she knew she could love him... This was no choice made with the mind.

  Daphne du Maurier

  Liars, Choices Made, Rude

  Daphne du Maurier (1936). “JAMAICA INN”

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• We leave a stain, we leave a trail, we leave our imprint. Impurity, cruelty, abuse, error, excrement, semen - there’s no other way to be here. Nothing to do with disobedience. Nothing to do with grace or salvation or redemption. It’s in everyone. Indwelling. Inherent. Defining. The stain that is there before its mark.

  Philip Roth

  Errors, Grace, Abuse

  FaceBook post by Philip Roth from Nov 21, 2016

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• People shouldn't have to earn kindness. They should have to earn cruelty.

  Maggie Stiefvater

  Kindness, Should Have, People

  Maggie Stiefvater (2011). “Forever”, p.110, Scholastic Inc.

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• Waking up was a daily cruelty, an affront, and she avoided it by not sleeping.

  Gregory Maguire

  Sleep, Insomnia, Wake Up

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• universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Friendship, Compassion, Animal

  Arthur Schopenhauer (2016). “101 Facts of life”, p.8, Publishdrive

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• There are always two people involved in cruelty, aren't there? One to be vicious and someone to suffer! And what's the use of getting rid of - of wickedness, say - in the outside world if you let it creep back into things from inside you?

  Margaret Mahy

  Two, People, Suffering

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• You know how to paint pleasure, cruelty, arrogance in glowing colors.

  Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

  Glowing, Color, Arrogance

  Leopold von Sacher-Masoch (2015). “Venus in Furs”, p.57, Cosimo Classics

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• Hearing the sound of your breathing as you sleep,
  with the dog at your feet, his head resting
  on a shoe, and the clock's ticking
  like water dripping in a sink - I know that, even if reincarnation were a fact,
  given the inherent cruelty of the world
  where beautiful things and people
  are blasted apart all the day long,
  I would never want to come back, knowing
  I could never be this lucky twice.

  Bruce Dawe

  Beautiful, Dog, Sleep

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• So, that was Nature's way. The mosquito felt pain and panic but the dragonfly knew nothing of cruelty. Humans would call it evil, the big dragonfly destroying the mosquito and ignoring the little insects suffering. Yet humans hated mosquitoes too, calling them vicious and bloodthirsty. All these words, words like 'evil' and 'vicious', they meant nothing to Nature. Yes, evil was a human invention.

  John Marsden

  Pain, Evil, Suffering

  John Marsden (2011). “The Tomorrow Series: Tomorrow When the War Began”, p.153, Hachette UK

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• Cruelty to animals is an enormous injustice; so is expecting those on the lowest rung of the economic ladder to do the dangerous, soul-numbing work of slaughtering sentient beings on our behalf.

  Victoria Moran

  Animal, Soul, Ladders

  Victoria Moran, Adair Moran (2012). “Main Street Vegan: Everything You Need to Know to Eat Healthfully and Live Compassionately in the Real World”, p.14, Penguin

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• No woman kills herself for love, and rarely for shame. It is the cruelty of hope that does a woman in; for no matter how many men a woman has given herself to, she never holds her life cheap until she foolishly believed it to be valued.

  Sheri Holman

  Men, Doe, Matter

  Sheri Holman (2010). “The Dress Lodger”, p.234, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• Here is the paradox of the thing we call freedom: the farther we wander from God and the more we try to break free from him, the more enchained we become. Every step we take away from Him leads us farther from the freedom of Jesus and closer to the cruelty of Cain.

  Steven James

  Jesus, Trying, Cain

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• The whole famous Reign of Terror [of the 1790s] in fifteen months guillotined 2,596 aristos. The Versaillists [the anti-Communards of 1871] executed 20,000 before their firing squads in one week. Do these figures represent the comparative efficiency of guillotine and modern rifle or the comparative cruelty of upper and lower class mobs?

  Guy Endore

  Squad, Class, Rifles

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• How can a good God appoint cruel people to positions of authority? The answer is simple: God is the originator of the authority, but He is not the author of the cruelty. Man is responsible for his cruel actions, not God. All authority is of God, but not all authority is godly.

  John Bevere

  Godly, Simple, Men

  John Bevere (2007). “Honor's Reward: How to Attract God's Favor and Blessing”, p.51, Messenger International

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• Love is not a consequence. Love is not a choice. Love is a thirst. A need as vital to the soul as water is to the body. Love is a precious draught that not only soothes a parched throat, but it vitalizes a man. It fortifies him enough that he is willing to slay dragons for the woman who offers it. Take that draught of love from me and I will shrivel to dust. To take it from a man dying of thirst and give it to another whilst he watches is a cruelty I never thought you capable of.

  Colleen Houck

  Love Is, Men, Dragons

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• In Philadelphia, I inadvertently came upon an edition of Robert Ingersoll's Essays and Lectures. This was an exciting discovery; his atheism confirmed my own belief that the horrific cruelty of the Old Testament was degrading to the human spirit.

  Charlie Chaplin

  Discovery, Philadelphia, Atheism

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• What is it the Bible teaches us? -- rapine, cruelty, and murder.

  Thomas Paine

  Murder, Founding Fathers Religion, Founding Fathers Atheist

  Thomas Paine (1995). “Thomas Paine: Collected Writings: Common Sense / The American Crisis / Rights of: (Library of America #76)”, p.822, Library of America

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• A God out there and values out there, if they existed, would be utterly useless and unintelligible to us. There is nothing to be gained by nostalgia for the old objectivism, which was in any case used only to justify arrogance, tyranny, and cruelty. People [forget] ... how utterly hateful the old pre-humanitarianism world was.

  Don Cupitt

  People, Arrogance, Would Be

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• Religion, politics, society are exploiting you, and you are being conditioned by them; you are being forced in a particular direction. You are not human beings; you are mere cogs in a machine.

  Jiddu Krishnamurti

  Suffering, Cogs, Machines

  "The Collected Works of J. Krishnamurti".

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• To Forget Venice is a tour de force of ventriloquism. Elegant, contemporary, and wry, the voice at its center is also capable of disarming flights of imagination as it enters and inhabits other lives across time and gender. The glittering, fetid city emerges as a complex metaphor for the human heart’s simultaneous tenderness and capacity for cruelty, its ‘silver glow / a local specialty: filth / disguised as ornament.’ This Venice is unforgettable.

  Chase Twichell

  Heart, Venice, Cities

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• People routinely assume that pornography is such a difficult and divisive issue because it's about sex. In fact, this culture struggles unsuccessfully with pornography because it is about men's cruelty to women, and the pleasure men sometimes take in that cruelty. And that is much more difficult for people-- men and women-- to face.

  Robert Jensen

  Sex, Struggle, Men

  Robert Jensen (2007). “Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity”

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• It is my sincere opinion that our precious time on earth should not be spent attempting to justify unbelievable acts of cruelty, death, and disease as a part of 'God’s Plan' or the greater good — and clinging to ancient texts that preach ill-concealed bigotry and sexism. Instead, we should find ways to make this life happy and satisfying, without regard to the unknowable nature of an afterlife.

  David G. McAfee

  Happy Life, Afterlife, Time On Earth

  FaceBook post by David G. McAfee from Mar 22, 2014

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