With the first act of cruelty committed in the name of revolution, with the first murder, with the first purge and execution, we have lost the revolution.
There is no denying that unhappiness - even violence - exists in some arranged marriages. Or that some arranged marriages are borne out of cruelty. And part of that six percent global divorce rate can be attributed to the powerful stigma against divorce that's present in countries where arranged marriage is common.
Cruelty, like every other vice, requires no motive outside of itself; it only requires opportunity.
Citizens of Rome might boast that the claim of 'Civus romanus sum' set them apart from barbarians and slaves, and it was true up to a point, but Roman citizens lived in a society that accepted pain, cruelty, and torture as the norm, and in which there was no suggestion of equality at birth or mercy in the afterlife.
To insult someone we call him 'bestial. For deliberate cruelty and nature, 'human' might be the greater insult.
The impulse to cruelty is, in many people, almost as violent as the impulse to sexual love - almost as violent and much more mischievous.
The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.
Is the capacity for cruelty inherent in all of us?
Animal rights activists talk about cruelty and torture, some backing their assertions by publishing out-of-date photographs of 'experiments' banned long ago. This is a misrepresentation. The work we do is performed with compassion, care, humanity and humility. I have never seen an animal suffer pain.
The Haitian people are gentle and lovable except for their enormous and unconscious cruelty.
The terrorists are fighting freedom with all their cunning and cruelty because freedom is their greatest fear - and they should be afraid, because freedom is on the march.
Cruelty to children is the thing I can least bear in the world.
The truth doesn't have to do with cruelty, the truth has to do with mercy.
Gentleness is the antidote for cruelty.
In the context of interfaith encounter, we need to bring to the surface how our actual beliefs shape what we do - not simply to agree that kindness is better than cruelty.
I got a divorce eleven years later on the grounds of cruelty, which is still not easy in England.
I wanted to get far away from those who believed in cruelty, so then I went to France, a land of true freedom, democracy, equality and fraternity.
Kindness is the beginning of cruelty.
There's a certain cruelty to being on a big screen as your eyelids start to sag and your hair falls out and turns gray that you either have to be able to handle or not. What you can't do is try to force yourself into roles that you could have played or would have played ten years earlier.
In the name of noble purposes men have committed unspeakable acts of cruelty against one another.
To punish the oppressors of humanity is clemency; to forgive them is cruelty.
War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over.
I was known for being talented, but I was still the fat girl. And it wasn't what people were looking for. There's a lot that you hear. There's a lot of cruelty out there. Some of it comes from the executive offices. It comes from other artists at times. It was a very difficult thing to overcome.
It is usually when men are at their most religious that they behave with the least sense and the greatest cruelty.
World's use is cold, world's love is vain, world's cruelty is bitter bane; but is not the fruit of pain.
I'm very touched on a deep level by cruelty to animals.
The course of this conflict is not known, yet its outcome is certain. Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty, have always been at war, and we know that God is not neutral between them.
The best political weapon is the weapon of terror. Cruelty commands respect. Men may hate us. But, we don't ask for their love; only for their fear.
We are bound to lose Ireland in consequence of years of cruelty, stupidity and misgovernment and I would rather lose her as a friend than as a foe.
It may be a mistake, that man, in a state of nature, is more disposed to cruelty than courtesy.
Fantasy is toxic: the private cruelty and the world war both have their start in the heated brain.
I think there is a complicated side effect to overcoming evil in that we are forever changed by it. I think after we ingest some of the cruelty of the world, it takes years off of our lives, but it also gives us wisdom and a little grace, hopefully a sense of compassion.
The bust of Colonel Sanders stands as a monument to cruelty and has no place in the Kentucky state Capitol.
Where does discipline end? Where does cruelty begin? Somewhere between these, thousands of children inhabit a voiceless hell.
Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.
This circulating medium has a natural tendency to lessen by degrees the value and the use of money, and finally to render it powerless; and consequently to sweep away all the crushing masses of fraud, iniquity, cruelty, corruption and imposition that are built upon it.
