Quotes for the Journey: Cruelty All cruelty springs from hard- heartedness and weakness. Seneca

meanness

The only moral lesson which is suited for a child--the most important lesson for every time of his or her life--is this:  Never hurt anybody.      -Jean Jacques Rousseau     Cruelty, like every other vice, requires no motive outside of itself; it only requires opportunity.      -George Eliot     Cruelty is a sign that a person is leading a particularly miserable life, that a person isn't satisfied with him or herself.  We can't change their lives for them, and we can't condone the cruelty or let it go unnoticed or unpunished, but let's try to be like the doctor who works to discover the cause of the symptoms.  Let's recognize that even cruel people are human beings who are possibly going through more difficult trials than we are, or who have never been taught how to deal with trials.  Let's recognize that even the cruel people are children of God and deserve our love and compassion.  Let's never repay cruelty with cruelty, for then we're adding to the lack of unity and harmony in the world, and we're doing just what the cruel person has done, except we can rationalize it as justified because we're doing it in retribution.       -Tom Walsh     Cruelty is, perhaps, the worst kid of sin. Intellectual cruelty is certainly the worst kind of cruelty.     -G.K. Chesterton     Amongst all other vices there is none I hate more than cruelty, both by nature and judgment, as the extremest of all vices.      -Montaigne     All cruel people describe themselves as paragons of frankness.     -Tennessee Williams

If it were absolutely necessary to choose, I would rather be guilty of an immoral act than of a cruel one.       -Anatole France

I have heard and seen many examples of the cruelty that we are able to visit on one another during my time. . . I have also seen incredible forgiveness and compassion.  Yes, each of us has the capacity for great evil.  But for every act of evil there are a dozen acts of goodness in our world that go unnoticed.  It is only because we believe that people should be good that we despair when they are not.  Indeed, if people condoned the evil, we would be justified in losing hope.  But most of the world does not.  We know that we are meant for better.      -Desmond Tutu, Believe

People speak sometimes about the "bestial" cruelty of humans, but that is terribly unjust and offensive to beasts, no animal could ever be so cruel as a person, so artfully, so artistically cruel.      -Fyodor Dostoevsky

Compassion for animals is intimately associated with goodness of character, and it may be confidently asserted that those who are cruel to animals cannot be good people.     -Arthur Schopenhauer, The Basis of Morality

Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.      -Bertrand Russell, Unpopular Essays

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