Theocracy is the worst of all governments. If we must have a tyrant, a robber baron is far better than an inquisitor. The baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity at some point be sated; and since he dimly knows he is doing wrong he may possibly repent. But the inquisitor who mistakes his own cruelty and lust of power and fear for the voice of Heaven will torment us infinitely because he torments us with the approval of his own conscience and his better impulses appear to him as temptations.
Sex and writing live on playful cruelties.
Goodness, real goodness, has it's own sort of cruelty to it.
Cruelty is like hope: it springs eternal.
There is no beast more cruel than man.
What is a wife and what is a harlot? What is a church and what is a theatre? are they two and not one? Can they exist separate? Are not religion and politics the same thing? Brotherhood is religion. O demonstrations of reason dividing families in cruelty and pride!
I think it's a real gift to be faced with man's potential for extreme cruelty but also man's resilience and the fact that love really does conquer everything. It's the only answer to these kinds of atrocities and it's not a passive thing.
I think of the security of cages. How violence, cruelty, oppression, become a kind of home, a familiar pattern, a cage, in which we know how to operate and define ourselves.
The underlying struggle - between worlds of plenty and worlds of want; between the modern and the ancient; between those who embrace our teeming, colliding, irksome diversity, while still insisting on a set of values that binds us together, and those who would seek, under whatever flag or slogan or sacred text, a certainty and simplification that justifies cruelty toward those not like us.
Cruelty might be very human, and it might be cultural, but it's not acceptable.
Probably human cruelty is fixed and eternal. Only styles change.
Liberal of cruelty are those who pamper with promises; promisers destroy while they deceive, and the hope they raise is dearly purchased by the dependence that is sequent to disappointment.
She would like to restrain from cruelty and receive no admiration for it.
It revealed a cruelty that really made one wonder if the universe was such a good idea after all.
When you're a kid it's people's cruelty that makes you cry, then when you're an adult it's their kindness.
The cruelty of nature is you have to work out harder when you get older. . . It should be the other way around: Work out hard when you're a kid you should be able to coast when you get older. But unfortunately you have to do more to stay in the same position.
What is it the Bible teaches us? -- rapine, cruelty, and murder.
Cruelty is one fashion statement we can all do without.
Nature is pitiless; she never withdraws her flowers, her music, her fragrance, and her sunlight from before human cruelty or suffering.
Kissing in front of the loveless is an act of cruelty.