#cruel

That's most interesting. But I was no more a mind-reader then than today. I was weeping for an altogether different reason. When I watched you dancing that day, I saw something else. I saw a new world coming rapidly. More scientific, efficient, yes. More cures for the old sicknesses. Very good. But a harsh, cruel world. And I saw a little girl, her eyes tightly closed, holding to her breast the old kind world, one that she knew in her heart could not remain, and she was holding it and pleading, never to let her go. That is what I saw. It wasn't really you, what you were doing, I know that. But I saw you and it broke my heart. And I've never forgotten. ↗

— Kazuo Ishiguro

#coldness #cruelty #dancing #future #heartbreak

Seems to me-" Lee said, feeling for the words, "seems to me the place you fight cruelty is where you find it, and the place you give help is where you see it needed.... ↗

— Philip Pullman

#cruelty

...here's what I've learned - people will hurt you, but you don't have to respond - not every mean comment or cruel act deserves to be noticed ... ↗

— John Geddes

#comments #cruelty #hurt #ignore #response

Kissing in front of the loveless is an act of cruelty. ↗

— Maggie Stiefvater

#maggie-stiefvater #cruelty

The human spirit glows from that small inner light of doubt whether we are right, while those who believe with certainty that they possess the right are dark inside and darken the world outside with cruelty, pain, and injustice. ↗

— Saul D. Alinsky

#doubt #cruelty

To see others suffer does one good, to make others suffer even more: this is a hard saying but an ancient, mighty, human, all-too-human principle [....] Without cruelty there is no festival. ↗

— Friedrich Nietzsche

#suffering #cruelty

the story is not a pretty one. there is violence in it. And cruelty. But stories that are not pretty have a certain value, too, I suppose. Everything, as you well know (having lived in this world long enough to have figured out a thing or two for yourself), cannont always be sweetness and light. ↗

— Kate DiCamillo

#despereaux #light #violence #cruelty

How much longer is the world willing to endure this spectacle of wanton cruelty? ↗

— Bertrand Russell

#palestine #cruelty

It is said that the greatest cruelty is drawn from those with the kindest hearts. ↗

— Terry Goodkind

#cruelty

Many [Tudor-era religious radicals] believed then, exactly as Christian fundamentalists do today, that they lived in the 'last days' before Armageddon and, again just as now, saw signs all around in the world that they took as certain proof that the Apocalypse was imminent. Again like fundamentalists today, they looked on the prospect of the violent destruction of mankind without turning a hair. The remarkable similarity between the first Tudor Puritans and the fanatics among today's Christian fundamentalists extends to their selective reading of the Bible, their emphasis on the Book of Revelation, their certainty of their rightness, even to their phraseology. Where the Book of Revelation is concerned, I share the view of Guy, that the early church fathers released something very dangerous on the world when, after much deliberation, they decided to include it in the Christian canon." [From the author's concluding Historical Note] ↗

— C.J. Sansom

#armageddon #book-of-revelation #cruelty #destruction #fundamentalism