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...

Things keep happening all around you. There is violence, there is gore, there are people who will use you and never look back to see what became of you, and worse, there are people who...

I have a sense that God is unfair and preferentially punishes his weak, his dumb, his fat, his lazy. I believe he takes more pleasure in his perfect creatures, and cheers them on like a...

Cruelty is the surest sign of stupidity.

I opened my louvres and looked at Comfort, walking in the heavy rain, crying bitterly. I heard mom saying, Anywhere you want to go, you can, but don’t come back again to this house. Comfort...

What is it the Bible teaches us? — repine, cruelty, and murder. What is it the Testament teaches us? — to believe that the Almighty committed debauchery with a woman engaged to be married; and...

He had discovered that there was not just one God but many, and some were more than cruel — they were insane, and that changed all. Cruelty, after all, was understandable. With insanity, however, there...

I’ve always loved strong women, which is lucky for me because once you’re over about twenty-five there is no other kind. Women blow my mind. The stuff that routinely gets done to them would make...

Do you understand what I’m saying?”shouted Moist. “You can’t just go around killing people!””Why Not? You Do.” The golem lowered his arm.”What?” snapped Moist. “I do not! Who told you that?””I Worked It Out. You...

Humour is for them the all-consoling and (mark this) the all-excusing, grace of life. Hence, it is invaluable as a means of destroying shame. If a man simply lets others pay for him, he is...

[T]he infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they invented Hell.

Exercise power by means of kindness, and you may be causing more damage than you could by cruelty. Neither approach is correct.

To list all the great discoveries in the field of science and medicine during the past century, such as aspirin, insulin, penicillin, and the streptomycin drugs would require the undivided attention of a medical historian...

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...

It’s despair at the lack of (I’m cheating, I didn’t say all these things – but I’m going to write what I want to say as well as what I did) feeling, of love, of...

If you haven’t caused a scene in a psych unit, it’s just because you haven’t been inside long enough.

Remembering that only a few years ago men, women, and even children, were imprisoned, tortured and burned, for having expressed in an exceedingly mild and gentle way, the ideas entertained by me, I congratulate myself...

Stupidity is to have amnesia over your own faults when the person you hate makes theirs.

I, on the other hand, interrupt people because my thoughts fly out of my mouth. My handbag’s full of rubbish. And I want to do something that matters with my life. Right now I’d like...

I don’t believe vegans (or vegetarians) who still get their (packaged, preservative/chemical-ridden) food from industrial food systems have any righteous ground to stand on, nor do I think a deep look at the sentient life...

Now, your Honor, I have spoken about the [Civil] war. I believed in it. I don’t know whether I was crazy or not. Sometimes I think perhaps I was. I approved of it; I joined...

that beauty can come from violence, if only in metaphor.

Perhaps she would not have thought of wickedness as a state so rare, so abnormal, so exotic, one which it was so refreshing to visit, had she been able to distinguish in herself, as in...

There is no redemption in a cruel man’s love.

Your dignity can be mocked, abused, compromised, toyed with, lowered and even badmouthed, but it can never be taken from you. You have the power today to reset your boundaries, restore your image, start fresh...

Often a woman that doesn’t have any business being in a fight is there because their ego thinks it can mend what other people can’t. It’s either superiority or a second chance to heal a...

Sentimentalist” is the abuse with which people counter the accusation that they are cruel, thereby implying that to be sentimental is worse than to be cruel, which it isn’t.

If anything should take place behind closed doors, it was cruelty and betrayal.

The cruelty itself is motivated by something deeper: the wish to know the secret of things and of life.

Man of an hard heart! Hear me, Proud, Stern, and Cruel! You could have saved me; you could have restored me to happiness and virtue, but would not! You are the destroyer of my Soul;...

Many writers make the mistake of making their readers appear like Lazarus, without any iota of care, throwing down books to readers to crunch as if they are dogs.

Punishing a person for the wrongs of another makes about as much sense as throwing up to enjoy the meal a second time.

I think it’s perfectly possible to explain how the universe came about without bringing God into it, but I don’t know everything, and there may well be a God somewhere, hiding away. Actually, if he...

I have always found it odd that people who think passive aggressively ignoring a person is making a point to them. The only point it makes to anyone is your inability to articulate your point...

In a cruel land, you either learned to laugh at cruelty or spent your life weeping.

There are two ways of life, one leading to righteousness, which brings happiness, and the other to unrighteousness, which produces misery. One leads to kindness, mercy and sympathy, the other to hatred and cruelty; one...

None of the characters in (the story) were distinguished ones — not even the lion.He was an old lion, prepared from birth to lose his life rather than to leave it. But he had the...

I don’t believe in the concept of hell, but if I did I would think of it as filled with people who were cruel to animals.

That’s most interesting. But I was no more a mind-reader then than today. Iwas weeping for an altogether different reason. When I watched you dancing that day, I saw something else. I saw a new...

‘In our inmost and secret heart, which you ask us to bare to you, we wish to banish them as we were banished, to a cold and lonely house, in the charge of a man...

{From Lindsey’s address at the funeral of renowned scientist Luther Burbank. Burbank was one of the most beloved people in the early 20th century due to his countless contributions to humanity, but when, in an...

Men like that — when they know they won’t be found out — they will do anything.

Is it true that man was once perfectly pure and innocent, and that he became degenerate by disobedience? No. The real truth is, and the history of man shows, that he has advanced. Events, like...

You can be bit in the leg by a rattlesnake and seek help to heal your wound, or you can run after it and let the poison take your leg. The same is true with...

I went closer this time and touched him. He let out a deafening shriek, as if something had pierced into his heart. I held his hand and sat there, admiring the intricate network of life...

I remember an hypothesis argued upon by the young students, when I was at St. Omer’s, and maintained with much learning and pleasantry on both sides, ‘Whether supposing that the flavour of a big who...

There are a lot of myths which make the human race cruel and barbarous and unkind. Good and Evil, Sin and Crime, Free Will and the like delusions made to excuse God for damning men...

How do evil people find the strength to do good?

…the years have taught me not to wonder too much at the dark things men do. Strange how it is that men never act crueller than when they’re fighting for the sake of an idea....

The thought of a comedy with paid prostitutes always seemed so silly and purposeless, for a person hired by me could never take the place of my imagination of a ‘cruel mistress’.