#cruelty

True beauty is something that attacks, overpowers, robs, and finally destroys. ↗

— Yukio Mishima

#cruelty #love #beauty

No, we aren't civilized, even in our business suits and high heels. People are as mean as ever, and as predictable. Underneath it all, we are not so different from what lurks in the wild, perhaps we're worse. ↗

— Donna Lynn Hope

#mean #monsters #people #business

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

— Gregory Maguire

#death #immortality #insomnia #death

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

We keep on being told that religion, whatever its imperfections, at least instills morality. On every side, there is conclusive evidence that the contrary is the case and that faith causes people to be more mean, more selfish, and perhaps above all, more stupid. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#cruelty #ethics #ethics-in-religion #morality #morality-without-religion

We cut the throat of a calf and hang it up by the heels to bleed to death so that our veal cutlet may be white; we nail geese to a board and cram them with food because we like the taste of liver disease; we tear birds to pieces to decorate our women's hats; we mutilate domestic animals for no reason at all except to follow an instinctively cruel fashion; and we connive at the most abominable tortures in the hope of discovering some magical cure for our own diseases by them. ↗

— George Bernard Shaw

#carnivore #carnivores #diet #health #meat

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

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