#cruel

A rude nature is worse than a brute nature by so much more as man is better than a beast: and those that are of civil natures and genteel dispositions are as much nearer to celestial creatures as those that are rude and cruel are to devils. ↗

— Margaret Cavendish

#better #brute #celestial #civil #creatures

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

— Gregory Maguire

#death #immortality #insomnia #death

From her dubious tone alone, I could see how Karin had no idea how terrifying words spoken quietly could be. How words chosen precisely to wreak maximum damage ticked like a bomb in your head, but exploded in your heart hours later, leaving you scarred and changed. ↗

— Justina Chen

#emotional-wounds #verbal-abuse #words #beauty

I believe that the place where an animal dies is a sacred one. There is a need to bring ritual into the conventional slaughter plants and use as a means to shape people's behavior. It would help prevent people from becoming numbed, callous, or cruel. The ritual could be something very simple, such as a moment of silence. In addition to developing better designs and making equipment to insure the humane treatments of all animals, that would be my contribution. ↗

— Temple Grandin

#animals #design

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

Some things are not forgiveable. Deliberate cruelty is not forgiveable. It is the most unforgiveable thing in my opinion, and the one thing in which I have never, ever been guilty. ↗

— Tennessee Williams

#forgiveness

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

#cruelty #freedom #god #jesus #paradox

You have the effrontery to be squeamish, it thought at him. But we were dragons. We were supposed to be cruel, cunning, heartless and terrible. But this much I can tell you, you ape – the great face pressed even closer, so that Wonse was staring into the pitiless depths of his eyes – we never burned and tortured and ripped one another apart and called it morality. ↗

— Terry Pratchett

#dark-humor #dragons #morality #humor