cruelty

Wearing a smile while claiming to not judge and condemn people as you equate their nature with no less than a carnal and immoral act rather than as understanding their orientation and identity as an intrinsic part of who they are doesn't lessen the harshness and cruelty of that rejection.

So, that was Nature's way. The mosquito felt pain and panic but the dragonfly knew nothing of cruelty. Humans would call it evil, the big dragonfly destroying the mosquito and ignoring the little insects suffering. Yet humans hated mosquitoes too, calling them vicious and bloodthirsty. All these words, words like 'evil' and 'vicious', they meant nothing to Nature. Yes, evil was a human invention.

There was always a screen behind which one could hide_ a superior who in turn had his superior_ orders, instructions, duties, commands_ and finally the many-headed monster, morale, necessity, hard reality, responsibility, or whatever it was called_ there was always a screen behind which to evade the simple law of humanity.

How can I escape a cage build by man?

We can never be gods, after all--but we can become something less than human with frightening ease.

Evil begins when you begin to treat people as things.

10 percent of any population is cruel, no matter what, and 10 percent is merciful, no matter what, and the remaining 80 percent can be moved in either direction.

Like a last signpost to the other path, Napoleon appeared, the most isolated and late-born man there has even been, and in him the problem of the noble ideal as such made flesh--one might well ponder what kind of problem it is; Napoleon this synthesis of the inhuman and the superhuman

Looking back upon millennia of history, it appears clear that no race or culture has monopoly on wartime cruelty. The veneer of civilization seems to be exceedingly thin _ one that can be easily stripped away, especially by the stresses of war.

Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon, than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness, that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind; and, for my part, I sincerely detest it, as I detest everything that is cruel.

There is no document of civilization that is not also a document of barbarism.

To be naive is to be unaware of how stupid and cruel other people are; but, by some definitions, ignorance is nearly the opposite of naivety in being a kind of cynicism, in being unaware of their intelligence and humanity. It seems to be a normal although unfortunate case that the great many of us consciously abhor ignorance in others yet subconsciously practice it ourselves: as naivety is apparent and well-known to inflict its damage upon oneself; whereas the alternative and the easier, ignorance, its damage upon others.

Start your future with an act of cruelty and continue your life carrying it in your soul

Sooner or later I will be faced with the fact that the world is helpless to meet my needs. And at that point, I will be left with two conclusions; that life is cruel or God is real.

Just because a person is attractive/beautiful, this does not mean it is okay to villainize them. We always say that we cannot judge a person from the outside (doesn't matter if they have a handicap, are ugly, have a deformity, etc.). But this must go both ways. It also does not matter if someone is beautiful, attractive and happy. That also does not make it okay to judge them, to villainize them. There is a double standard when it comes to whom people choose to be good to, and this double standard is wrong. The outward appearance, both the grotesque and the beautiful, must not be basis for kindness and for cruelty.

Why,' I said, quite surprised by my own eloquence in inventing all this stuff, 'it happens every day. The old old story. Boys and girls fall in love, that is, they are driven mad and go blind and deaf and see each other not as human animals with comic noses and bandy legs and voices like frogs, but as angels so full of shining goodness that like hollow turnips with candles put into them, they seem miracles of beauty. And the next minute the candles shoot out sparks and burn their eyes. And they seem to each other like devils, full of spite and cruelty. And they will drive each other mad unless they have grown some imagination. Even enough to laugh.

Anger, resentment and jealousy doesn't change the heart of others-- it only changes yours.

D'Artagnan had time to reflect that women - those gentle doves - treat one another more cruelly than bears and tigers.