Cruel Quotes

“Nothing is ever certain.”
― Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones

“Why is there ever this perverse cruelty in humankind, that makes us hurt most those we love best?”
― Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Chosen

“They send a person who can never stay," she whispered. "Who can never accept my offer of companionship for more than a little while. They send me a hero I can't help ... just the sort of person I can't help falling in love with."
...
As I sailed into the lake I realized the Fates really were cruel. They sent Calypso someone she couldn't help but love. But it worked both ways. For the rest of my life I would be thinking about her. She would always be my biggest what if.”
― Rick Riordan, The Battle of the Labyrinth

“It is from the Bible that man has learned cruelty, rapine, and murder; for the belief of a cruel God makes a cruel man.”
― Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason

“At first I did not love you, Jude; that I own. When I first knew you I merely wanted you to love me. I did not exactly flirt with you; but that inborn craving which undermines some women's morals almost more than unbridled passion--the craving to attract and captivate, regardless of the injury it may do the man--was in me; and when I found I had caught you, I was frightened. And then--I don't know how it was-- I couldn't bear to let you go--possibly to Arabella again--and so I got to love you, Jude. But you see, however fondly it ended, it began in the selfish and cruel wish to make your heart ache for me without letting mine ache for you.”
― Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure

“Those who pray for your downfall are concentrating negative thoughts towards you, without taking cognisance of the slippery ground in which they are standing, which could lead to their downfall.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson

“It was so much easier when I didn't want anything. Not getting what you want can make you cruel.”
― David Levithan, Every Day

“Ellen had said that her mother was afraid of the ocean, that it was too cold and too big. The sky was, too, thought Annemarie. The whole world was: too cold, too big. And too cruel. ”
― Lois Lowry, Number the Stars

“It strikes me profoundly that the world is more often than not a bad and cruel place.”
― Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho

“Guard your mortal heart.”
― Holly Black, The Cruel Prince

“If we could believe that he [Jesus] really countenanced the follies, the falsehoods, and the charlatanism which his biographers [Gospels] father on him, and admit the misconstructions, interpolations, and theorizations of the fathers of the early, and the fanatics of the latter ages, the conclusion would be irresistible by every sound mind that he was an impostor... We find in the writings of his biographers matter of two distinct descriptions. First, a groundwork of vulgar ignorance, of things impossible, of superstitions, fanaticisms and fabrications... That sect [Jews] had presented for the object of their worship, a being of terrific character, cruel, vindictive, capricious and unjust... Jesus had to walk on the perilous confines of reason and religion: and a step to right or left might place him within the gripe of the priests of the superstition, a blood thirsty race, as cruel and remorseless as the being whom they represented as the family God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob, and the local God of Israel. They were constantly laying snares, too, to entangle him in the web of the law... That Jesus did not mean to impose himself on mankind as the son of God, physically speaking, I have been convinced by the writings of men more learned than myself in that lore.

[Letter to William Short, 4 August, 1820]”
― Thomas Jefferson, Letters of Thomas Jefferson

“It was cruel. Like opening a birdcage to let the bird fly out, whilst all the while it's tethered by the leg, and freedom is only an illusion.”
― Laini Taylor, Strange the Dreamer

“Compassion is a lifetime business. You can't say something like, "I will have compassion on Monday, Thursdays and Fridays only. But for the rest, I will be cruel". That is hypocrisy.”
― Israelmore Ayivor

“The moment you have to recruit people to put another person down, in order to convince someone of your value is the day you dishonor your children, your parents and your God. If someone doesn't see your worth the problem is them, not people outside your relationship.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“No man is brave that has never walked a hundred miles. If you want to know the truth of who you are, walk until not a person knows your name. Travel is the great leveler, the great teacher, bitter as medicine, crueler than mirror-glass. A long stretch of road will teach you more about yourself than a hundred years of quiet introspection.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man’s Fear

“Wild animals are less wild and more human than many humans of this world”
― Munia Khan

“Dragon kind was no less cruel than mankind. The Dragon, at least, acted from bestial need rather than bestial greed.”
~ A thought by Lessa ~”
― Anne McCaffrey, Dragonflight

“Nature can be cruel. Predators are everywhere. Those who don't need to be protected from outside forces often need to be protected from themselves. In society, women are referred to as "the fairer sex". But in the wild, the female species can be far more ferocious than their male counterparts. Defending the nest is both our oldest and strongest instinct. And sometimes, it can also be the most gratifying.”
― Emily Thorne

“Life sometimes reminds us that it is sometimes heartless by giving something or someone we really need to someone who does not need or even want them or it.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“You know if you would just do as I say I wouldn't have to hurt you.”
― Amanda Stephan, The Price of Trust

“Soft feathers cannot make a cruel bird kind”
― Munia Khan

“I am metaphysical being, mystical and emotional, skeptical and cynical, happy and boisterous, loud and bawdy, quiet and melancholy, tender and cruel, full of mirth and despair. Inherent inconsistences mark me as part of nature, which is neither cruel nor fair, or reliable or predictable.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“Life. We'd long known it was cruel.”
― Nova Ren Suma, The Walls Around Us

“The weakest ones are the wickedest cruel
When the strongest ones in gentleness rule!”
― Ana Claudia Antunes, The Witches Of Avignon

“How cruelly sweet are the echoes that start, when memory plays an old tune on the heart!”
― Eliza Cook

“True monsters are not those lurking under the bed, but the ones sleeping in it.”
― Silje Akselberg Iversen

“A little inhumanity does not describe you as heartless, rather, it is a way of telling others that you have a heart that can get angry.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson

“Did life treat everyone so wantonly, ripping the good things to pieces while letting bad things fester and grow like fungus”
― Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance

“If you're all so peaceful up there, how did you get such greedy and cruel ideas?"
The dragon was silent for a long time after this question. And at last he said: "It just came over me. I don't know why. It just came over me, listening to the battling shouts and the war-cries of the earth - I got excited, I wanted to join in.”
― Ted Hughes, The Iron Man

“Don't let the cruel make you unkind. And don't let the unkind make you cruel.”
― Giovannie de Sadeleer