195 quotes found
“Denna is a wild thing," I explained. "Like a hind or a summer storm. If a storm blows down your house, or breaks a tree, you don't say the storm was mean. It was cruel. It acted according to its na...”
“Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.”
“Cruelty and fear shake hands together. An unfulfilled vocation drains the color from a man's entire existence.”
“It seemed to me that all things were possible on the island, all tyrannies and cruelties, though in small; and if, in despite of what was possible, we lived at peace with another, surely this was p...”
“We live in a cruel world, Isabel," he says, without looking at me. "I am only a man, and will not always live up to your expectations. And to me, that is a painful reality. But we must never be cru...”
“Parallel to tenderness and cruelty, the cataracts of pleasure and pain are interrelated. Painful and pleasurable sensations instruct us of our physical boundaries. The collective scorecard of physi...”
“And it seemed as though for a moment, the world encapsulated them in a giant sigh. As if the world was exhausted by humanityby the bellows of war and bullets, of hateful cries and grieving tears. O...”
“Nevertheless, in this sea of human wretchedness and malice there bloomed at times compassion, as a pale flower blooms in a putrid marsh.”
“I am not cruel only truthful.”
“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 w...”
“People forget how vulnerable they are despite their shirts and shoes and briefcases, how this hungry and cruel world could strip them, put them in the same position as my beggars.”
“Waking up was a daily cruelty, an affront, and she avoided it by not sleeping.”
“You cannot harden your heart to the future just because of your past. You cannot use cruelty against yourself to justify cruelty to others.”
“[W]e are hardened to what we know, and we rationalise and even justify cruelties practised by us and our like while retaining the capacity to be outraged, even disgusted by practices equally cruel ...”
“Cruelty had been his weapon. But such a tool is dangerous and can spread further than you intend.”
“We spend a lifetime undoing the damage caused by cruelty, neglect, and all manner of lovelessness experienced in our families of origin and in relationships where we simply where we simply did not ...”
“Unlimited power in the hands of limited people always leads to cruelty.”
“It appears that no one is so unfortunate that he or she is exempt from spending cuts, while at the same time no one is so fortunate as to be ineligible for a tax cut”
“There are few uglier traits of human nature than this tendencywhich I now witnessed in men no worse than their neighboursto grow cruel, merely because they possessed the power of inflicting harm.”
“Subjugation requires vigilance; if you relax your brutality even for a moment, the people you're oppressing will revolt at the first sign of weakness. That's why dictatorial regimes are always a sl...”
