Cruelty - Quotes

Cruelty ever proceeds from a vile mind, and often from a cowardly heart. - Lodovico Ariosto

Cruelty is the law pervading all nature and society; and we can't get out of it if we would. - Thomas Hardy

Cruelty towards others is always also cruelty towards ourselves. - Paul Tillich

Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom. - Bertrand Russell

Fear is the parent of cruelty. - James Anthony Froude

I must be cruel, only to be kind; thus bad begins, and worse remains behind. - William Shakespeare

Man is subject to innumerable pains and sorrows by the very condition of humanity, and yet, as if nature had not sown evils enough in life, we are continually adding grief to grief and aggravating the common calamity by our cruel treatment of one another. - Joseph Addison

Man is the cruellest animal. At tragedies, bullfights, and crucifixions he has so far felt best on earth; and when he invented hell for himself, behold, that was his heaven on earth. - Friedrich Nietzsche

Nothing can be more contrary to nature, to reason, to religion, than cruelty; hence as inhuman man is generally considered as a monster; such monsters, however, have existed; and the heart almost bleeds at the recital of the cruel acts such have been guilty of; it teaches us, however, what human nature is when left to itself; not only treacherous, but desperately wicked. - Charles Buck

People talk sometimes of a bestial cruelty, but that's a great injustice and insult to the beasts; a beast can never be so cruel as a man, so artistically cruel. The tiger only tears and gnaws, that's all he can do. He would never think of nailing people by the ears, even if he were able to do it. - Fyodor Dostoevsky

Probably human cruelty is fixed and eternal. Only styles change. - Martin Amis

There is no beast more cruel than man. - Leonid Andreyev

We ought never to sport with pain and distress in any of our amusements, or treat even the meanest insect with wanton cruelty. - Hugh Blair