It is not merely cruelty that leads men to love war, it is excitement.
Beheading, burying and burning humans alive are extreme acts of cruelty. Such crimes against humanity must be investigated and the guilty parties brought to justice. May ALL victims rest in peace!
Kissing in front of the loveless is an act of cruelty.
The cemetery of the victims of human cruelty in our century is extended to include yet another vast cemetery, that of the unborn.
Storytelling is an act of cruelty. We are cruel to our characters because to be kind is to invite boredom, and boredom in storytelling is synonymous with big doomy death-shaped death. So: be cruel to your protagonist. Rob him of something. Something important. Something he needs. A weapon. An asset. A piece of knowledge. A loved one. A DELICIOUS PIE. Take it away! Force him to operate without it. Conflict reinvigorates stale stories. New conflict, or old conflict that has evolved and grown teeth.
The sort of seeing cruelty and callousness of that sort from young people is heartbreaking.
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.
It is ill-manners to silence a fool and cruelty to let him go on
It's not cruelty, maybe, but a desire to understand that motivates them.
There's a certain edge about cruelty. If you're honest about it, most people wince, but say it had to be said.
War is cruelty, and none can make it gentle.
There is something going on now in Mexico that I happen to think is cruelty to animals. What I'm talking about, of course, is cat juggling.
People are able to justify immense cruelty and say that it is something that is sanctioned by their faith.
If the people raise a great howl against my barbarity and cruelty, I will answer that war is war, and not popularity seeking.
Cruelty to children is the thing I can least bear in the world.
It is said that the greatest cruelty is drawn from those with the kindest hearts.
. . . so much attention is paid to the aggressive sins, such as violence and cruelty, and greed with all their tragic effects, that too little attention is paid to the passive sins, such as apathy and laziness, which in the long run can have a more devastating and destructive effect upon society than the others.
If one of the arguments against eating meat is to do with cruelty and animal intelligence, then lab meat avoids that. There's also the environmental argument for it.
Cruelty, very far from being a vice, is the first sentiment Nature injects in us all.
I think because of their terrible past, particularly this century, the Chinese have come to accept cruelty more than many other people, which is something I feel very unhappy about