#cruelty

You would never do anything like that, would you?" my wife asked him. "You would never hurt animals." Our son shook his head, looking offended by the question. He might have been lying, but my knowledge of his belief system, composed of equal parts off-kilter Far Side animal-centrism and a dark Captain Nemoesque contempt for humanity, inclined me to think he was telling the truth. Gigantic fish pulling the limbs from cruel little boys, that might be something you could get him to sign on for. ↗

— Michael Chabon

#humor #equality

I hurt myself deeply, though at the time I had no idea how deeply. I should have learned many things from that experience, but when I look back on it, all I gained was one single, undeniable fact. That ultimately I am a person who can do evil. I never consciously tried to hurt anyone, yet good intentions notwithstanding, when necessity demanded, I could become completely self-centred, even cruel. I was the kind of person who could, using some plausible excuse, inflict on a person I cared for a wound that would never heal. ↗

— Haruki Murakami

#evil #good-intentions #hurt #looking-back #self-centered

I've always loved strong women, which is lucky for me because once you're over about twenty-five there is no other kind. Women blow my mind. The stuff that routinely gets done to them would make most men curl up and die, but women turn to steel and keep on coming. Any man who claims he's not into strong women is fooling himself mindless; he's into strong women who know how to pout prettily and put on baby voices, and who will end up keeping his balls in her makeup bags. ↗

— Tana French

#cruelty #independence #love #men #strength

Cruelty is a language that the blind can see, the deaf can hear, and the heart feels forever. ↗

— Shannon L. Alder

#cruelty #hateful-people #love #relationships #unrequited-love

It's despair at the lack of (I'm cheating, I didn't say all these things - but I'm going to write what I want to say as well as what I did) feeling, of love, of reason in the world. It's despair that anyone can even contemplate the idea of dropping a bomb or ordering that it should be dropped. It's despair that so few of us care. It's despair that there's so much brutality and callousness in the world. ↗

— John Fowles

#humanity #pacifism #violence #love

April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain. ↗

— T.S. Eliot

#cruelty #poetry #seasons #weather #dead

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

#conquer #cruelty #fear #main #main source

The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they invented Hell. ↗

— Bertrand Russell

#cruelty #delight #good #hell #infliction

I think that if people are instructed about anything, it should be about the nature of cruelty. And about why people behave so cruelly to each other. And what kind of satisfactions they derive from it. And why there is always a cost, and a price to be paid. ↗

— Richard Russo

#always #anything #behave #cost #cruelly

In plain terms, a child is a complicated creature who can drive you crazy. There's a cruelty to childhood, there's an anger. ↗

— Maurice Sendak

#child #childhood #complicated #crazy #creature