#cruel

Keep me rather in this cage, and feed me sparingly, if you dare. Anything that brings me closer to illness and the edge of death makes me more faithful. It is only when you make me suffer that I feel safe and secure. You should never have agreed to be a god for me if you were afraid to assume the duties of a god, and we know that they are not as tender as all that. You have already seen me cry. Now you must learn to relish my tears. ↗

— Pauline Réage

#cruelty #dark #faith #god #love

The world was a terrible place, cruel, pitiless, dark as a bad dream. Not a good place to live. Only in books could you find pity, comfort, happiness - and love. Books loved anyone who opened them, they gave you security and friendship and didn't ask anything in return; they never went away, never, not even when you treated them badly. ↗

— Cornelia Funke

#cruelty #inkheart #reading #dreams

Why is there ever this perverse cruelty in humankind, that makes us hurt most those we love best? ↗

— Jacqueline Carey

#god #human #hurt #love #pain

I loathe, detest, hate and abominate the block, the gibbet, the rack, the pillory and the faggots with equal passion," said the old man vehemently. "Not only are they devilishly cruel but they are not even common sense. They do not lesson the evil in the world, they increase it, by making those who handle these cruelties as wicked as those who suffer them. No, I'm wrong, more wicked, for there is always some expiation made in the endurance of suffering and none at all in the infliction of it. ↗

— Elizabeth Goudge

#suffering #wickedness #equality

The sight of her made him understand why he'd lost his faith in God. ↗

— Sarah Langan

#fiction #god #horror #human-cruelty #humor

I never, even for a moment, doubted what they’d told me. This is why it is that adults and even parents can, unwittingly, be cruel: they cannot imagine doubt’s complete absence. They have forgotten. ↗

— David Foster Wallace

#doubt #innocence #parents #imagination

We all have a right to know, and if the government has been suppressing information about other life forms, that's the cruelest hoax of all. ↗

— Dwight Schultz

#been #cruelest #forms #government #hoax

In a cruel land, you either learned to laugh at cruelty or spent your life weeping. ↗

— Robert Jordan

#laugh #weep #life

Only when we have become nonviolent towards all life will we have learned to live well with others. ↗

— César Chávez

#animal-kindness #animal-rights #nonviolent #vegan #life

Twas such a useless thing. And so unnecessary. Many had suffered for the actions of a few. Wasn't that always the way of things? The collective suffered for the actions of an inept, ineffectual leader. ↗

— Maya Banks

#cruelty #life #life-and-living #suffering #life