#cruelty

I think cruelty is just loneliness disguised as bitterness. ↗

— Tom Hiddleston

#cruelty

Bluebell had been saying that he knew the men hated us for raiding their crops and gardens, and Toadflax answered, 'That wasn't why they destroyed the warren. It was just because we were in their way. They killed us to suit themselves. ↗

— Richard Adams

#evil #human-cruelty #men

He who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealins with men. We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals. ↗

— Immanuel Kant

#philosophy #men

My father was a deeply sentimental man. And like all sentimental men, he was also very cruel. ↗

— Ernest Hemingway

#hemingway #sentimentality-cruelty-ideology #men

A few years ago the Deists denied the inspiration of the Bible on account of its cruelty. At the same time they worshiped what they were pleased to call the God of Nature. Now we are convinced that Nature is as cruel as the Bible; so that, if the God of Nature did not write the Bible, this God at least has caused earthquakes and pestilence and famine, and this God has allowed millions of his children to destroy one another. So that now we have arrived at the question -- not as to whether the Bible is inspired and not as to whether Jehovah is the real God, but whether there is a God or not. ↗

— Robert G. Ingersoll

#cruelty #deism #disaster #god #jehovah

Idle people are often bored and bored people, unless they sleep a lot, are cruel. It is not accident that boredom and cruelty are great preoccupations in our time. ↗

— Renata Adler

#bored #boredom #cruel #cruelty #great

I was helpless in trying to return people's kindness, but also helpless to resist it. Kindness is a scarier force than cruelty, that's for sure. Cruelty isn't that hard to understand. I had no trouble comprehending why the phone company wanted to screw me over; they just wanted to steal some money, it was nothing personal. That's the way of the world. It made me mad, but it didn't make me feel stupid. If anything, it flattered my intelligence. Accepting all that kindness, though, made me feel stupid. Human benevolence is totally unfair. We don't live in a kind or generous world, yet we are kind and generous. We know the universe is out to burn us, and it gets us all the way it got Renee, but we don't burn each other, not always. We are kind people in an unkind world, to paraphrase Wallace Stevens. How do you pretend you don't know about it, after you see it? How do you go back to acting like you don't need it? How do you even the score and walk off a free man? You can't. I found myself forced to let go of all sorts of independence I thought I had, independence I had spent years trying to cultivate. That world was all gone, and now I was a supplicant, dependent on the mercy of other people's psychic hearts. ↗

— Rob Sheffield

#grief #kindness #intelligence

It's not cruelty, maybe, but a desire to understand that motivates them. ↗

— Veronica Roth

#cruelty #honesty #motivational

Beware the ends of the earth and the exotic: the drama is on your doorstep wherever the slums; are, wherever there is malnutrition, wherever there is exploitation and cruelty. ↗

— John Grierson

#cruelty #doorstep #drama #earth #ends

Kindness is the beginning of cruelty. ↗

— Frank Herbert

#cruelty #kindness