Cruelty Quotes - Page 24

• Experience has taught me that the only cruelties people condemn are those with which they do not happen to be familiar.

  Ellen Glasgow

  People, Taught, Familiar

  Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow (1958). “Letters of Ellen Glasgow”

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• Just as a person who is always asserting that he is too good-natured is the very one from whom to expect, on some occasion, the coldest and most unconcerned cruelty, so when any group sees itself as the bearer of civilization this very belief will betray it into behaving barbarously at the first opportunity.

  Simone Weil

  Opportunity, Civilization, Firsts

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• In the sex-war, thoughtlessness is a weapon of the male, vindictiveness of the female. Both are reciprocally generated, but a woman's desire for revenge outlasts all other emotion. Yet when every unkind word about women has been said, we have still to admit, with Byron, that they are nicer than men. They are more devoted, more unselfish and more emotionally sincere. When the long fuse of cruelty, deceit and revenge is set alight, it is male thoughtlessness which has fired it.

  Cyril Connolly

  Sex, Revenge, War

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• we do know now, all of us, that the most appalling cruelties are committed by apparently virtuous governments in expectation of a great good to come, never learning that the evil done now is the sure destroyer of the expected good.

  Katherine Anne Porter

  Government, Evil, Expectations

  Katherine Anne Porter, Darlene Harbour Unrue (2008). “Collected stories and other writings”

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• Oh - oh, why is it that the members of a family feel privileged to treat one another with a cruelty they would not exhibit to the merest stranger?

  Fannie Hurst

  Family, Stranger, Treats

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• That cruelty which children are permitted to show to birds and other animals will most probably exert itself on their fellow creatures when at years of maturity.

  Samuel Richardson

  Children, Maturity, Animal

  Samuel Richardson (1980). “A collection of the moral and instructive sentiments: a facsimile reproduction”, Scholars Facsimilies & Reprint

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• I believe I am quite amiable and affable and quite fair, and I've rarely worked with people who are the opposite. Moodiness scares me. What gets to me is unkindness. Madness. Unwarranted cruelty through words. People who scream and shout at work. I hate confrontation and violence. I've done it in the past and I don't want to do it again. I guess I want a perfect world.

  Anthony Hopkins

  Hate, Believe, Past

  "New Again: Anthony Hopkins". Interview with Lisa Liebman, www.interviewmagazine.com. March, 1992.

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• Nothing is so pregnant as cruelty; so multifarious, so rapid, so ever teeming a mother is unknown to the animal kingdom; each of her experiments provokes another and refines upon the last; though always progressive, yet always remote from the end.

  Johann Kaspar Lavater

  Mother, Animal, Cuckoos

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• A thousand kindnesses do not make up for a thousand blows.

  Louise Bogan

  Kindness, Blow, Abuse

  Louise Bogan, Ruth Limmer (1980). “Journey around my room: the autobiography of Louise Bogan : a mosaic”, Viking Pr

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• Sadistic literature is not only inhumane. It is anti-human.

  Storm Jameson

  Literature, Sadistic, Torture

  Storm Jameson (2011). “Parthian Words”, p.69, A&C Black

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• What I do not know and cannot even hope to understand before I die is why human beings are willfully, coldly, matter-of-factly cruel to each other ... What nerve has atrophied in the torturer, or worse is sensually moved?

  Storm Jameson

  Nerves, Matter, Humans

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• The strangest thing about life is not its frightful cruelty, but that it can be gentle.

  Storm Jameson

  Life Is, Gentle

  Storm Jameson (2011). “The Journal of Mary Hervey Russell”, p.39, A&C Black

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• An animal is not cruel; it lives wholly in the instant leap on its prey, in the present taste of marrow or blood. Cruelty begins with the memory, and the pleasures of the memory are impure; they draw their strength along levels where no sun has reached.

  Storm Jameson

  Memories, Animal, Blood

  Storm Jameson (2011). “The Journal of Mary Hervey Russell”, p.50, A&C Black

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• Novelists who treat violence and cruelty as something to be exploited for their effect, or to enjoy the pleasure of an evacuation, are carriers of a singularly unpleasant disease.

  Storm Jameson

  Disease, Violence, Novelists

  Storm Jameson (2011). “Parthian Words”, p.112, A&C Black

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• Imagination is the first faculty wanting in those that do harm to their kind.

  Margaret Oliphant

  Compassion, Imagination, Firsts

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• perhaps these men in the House Caucus Room [Committee on Un-American Activities] are determined to spread silence: to frighten those voices which will shout no, and ask questions, defend the few, attack cruelty and proclaim the rights and dignity of man. ... America is going to look very strange to Americans and they will not be at home here, for the air will slowly become unbreathable to all forms of life except sheep.

  Martha Gellhorn

  Home, Men, Sheep

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• The world, with all its beauty and adventure, its richness and variety, is darkened by cruelty. Death, if it ends the loveliness, the adventure, ends also that. Death balances the picture.

  Winifred Holtby

  Adventure, Balance, World

  Winifred Holtby (2011). “South Riding”, p.455, Hachette UK

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• There is cruelty in divorce. There is cruelty in forced or unfortunate marriage. We will continue to cry at weddings because we know how bittersweet, how fragile is the truth. We will always need legal divorce just as an emergency escape hatch is crucial in every submarine. No sense, however, in denying that after every divorce someone will be running like a cat, tin cans tied to its tail: spooked and slowed down.

  Anne Roiphe

  Running, Cat, Divorce

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• There is no society for the prevention of cruelty to women.

  Voltairine de Cleyre

  Prevention

  Voltairine de Cleyre (2012). “Exquisite Rebel: The Essays of Voltairine de Cleyre -- Anarchist, Feminist, Genius”, p.233, SUNY Press

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• Intelligence is derived from two words - inter and legere - inter meaning 'between' and legere meaning 'to choose'. An intelligent person, therefore, is one who has learned 'to choose between'. He knows that good is better than evil, that confidence should supersede fear, that love is superior to hate, that gentleness is better than cruelty, forbearance than intolerance, compassion than arrogance, and that truth has more virtue than ignorance.

  J. Martin Klotsche

  Hate, Ignorance, Intelligent

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• Have you ever stopped to think how much unhappiness and downright cruelty are laid to the loving kindness of the Lord? And always by His most ardent followers, it seems.

  Nella Larsen

  Kindness, Thinking, Religion

  Nella Larsen (2010). “The Complete Fiction of Nella Larsen: Passing, Quicksand, and The Stories”, p.188, Anchor

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• Power rises to the top like cream and dominates the weak with cruelty disguised as -- and often even believed to be -- benevolence.

  Michael J. Sullivan

  Weak, Benevolence, Cream

  Michael J. Sullivan (2009). “Nyphron Rising”, p.245, Ridan Publishing

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• If only the peace I feel right nowcould be stored up and released laterwhen cruelty surrounds mein the darkduring nightmares.

  Margarita Engle

  Nightmare, Feels Right, Surround

  Margarita Engle (2009). “Tropical Secrets: Holocaust Refugees in Cuba”, p.158, Macmillan

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• I enjoy entering the viewpoint of characters who are as different from myself as I can get - children, elderly women, animals, a sexy death row murderess - and to imagine how these disparate individuals see the world's cruelty and beauty and vastness.

  Scott Bradfield

  Sexy, Children, Character

  "Go Forth (Vol. 15)". Interview with Brandon Hobson, believermagblog.wordpress.com. September 10, 2013.

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• Question of "Where We Begin" turns to be not only a formal question but also a question central to the attempt to make sense of things about which it is very difficult to make any sense - illness, death, despair, suicides, cruelty, the various troubles love can provoke, our inability to really know one another when we our inner selves are walled off by our bodies.

  Kyle Minor

  Suicide, Self, Despair

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