The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn’t being said. The art of reading between the lines is a life long quest of the wise.

The important thing isn’t what other people think you are; it’s who you are.

…perhaps great sins start as simple weakness, and the consistent placing of self before others.

All feminine claws, he said to himself, are sheathed in velvet; but they can hurt a good deal if they touch you on the sore places of the defects of your qualities–even merely with the...

Those stories tended to be located around the places where things went wrong, and people were cruel to one another, and so on. They reflected what was probably the most urgent truth operating in me...

The cruelest countries have the most laws.

Just because you have stolen someone’s heart, luckily owned and occupied as a home, doesn’t give you the audacity to enforce hurtful policies.

It is from the Bible that man has learned cruelty, rapine, and murder; for the belief of a cruel God makes a cruel man.

Also, I’m angry. I know life is hard, I think everyone knows that in their hearts, but why does it have to be cruel, as well? Why does it have to bite?

In great hearts the cruelty of life gives birth to good.

It’s not cruelty, maybe, but a desire to understand that motivates them.

Though you are three times more beautiful than angels,Though you are the sister of the river willows,I will kill you with my singing,Without spilling your blood on the ground.Not touching you with my hand,Not giving...

Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.

Cruelty and fear shake hands together. An unfulfilled vocation drains the color from a man’s entire existence.

Astarte has come again, more powerful than before. She possesses me. She lies in wait for me.December 97My cruelty has also returned: the cruelty which frightens me. It lies dormant for months, for years, and...

It appears that no one is so unfortunate that he or she is exempt from spending cuts, while at the same time no one is so fortunate as to be ineligible for a tax cut

I’d believed mine was the greatest of all the arts, the noblest of all the lies, the creation of hope. I thought hope could overcome everything, but I was wrong. Hope cannot overcome truth. Hope...

All animals understand love and affection, but only man shows the propensity to place himself into the shoes of another life form

When reading the history of the Jewish people, of their flight from slavery to death, of their exchange of tyrants, I must confess that my sympathies are all aroused in their behalf. They were cheated,...

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

There must have been a moment, at the beginning, were we could have said — no. But somehow we missed it.

Since my arrival in Rome, I have had many opportunities to wonder if compassion’s opposite is cruelty, or to reflect whether or not indifference would serve as a better black to its white.

…It also taught me that while cruelty can be fun for a few moments, compassion has a much longer shelf life.

Christine did not live, or love, as most people do. She lived boundlessly, as generous as she could be cruel, prepared to give her life at any moment for a worthy cause, but rarely sparing...

There are always two people involved in cruelty, aren’t there? One to be vicious and someone to suffer! And what’s the use of getting rid of – of wickedness, say – in the outside world...

… the burrowing wasp, which in order to provide a supply of fresh meat for her offspring after her own decease, calls in the science of anatomy to amplify the resources of her instinctive cruelty,...

That’s not cruel. This is. You come here in the middle of the night, expecting me to be awake, and ask—no, demand—me to give you things that belong to me as much as they belong...

It was woman that taught me cruelty, and on woman therefore I have exercised it.

A best friend is the only one that walks into your life when the world has walked out.

A boy has other people do the talking for him; a man speaks his mind.

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...