Arthur Schopenhauer Quotes

Cruelty is not a literary value.

Humanity is best described as inhumanity.

Scenes of blood and cruelty are shocking to our ear and heart. What man has nerve to do, man has not nerve to hear.

I don't understand how people can take a gentle, loving life and treat it with such cruelty.

Truly, I would not hang a dog by my will, much more a man who hath any honesty in him.

I think for really good-hearted people, that idea of putting yourself in the shoes of a monster to figure out why they acted that way, that's a really frightening idea.

I'm empathetic to a fault. I really do - embarrassingly enough - tear up when someone squishes a bug in front of me.

There is only one way in which one can endure man's inhumanity to man and that is to try, in one's own life, to exemplify man's humanity to man.

Gentleness is the antidote for cruelty.

When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?

Cruelty towards others is always also cruelty towards ourselves.

I've learned that intelligence alone doesn't mean a damn thing. It only leads to violence and pain.

Compassion has enemies, and those enemies are things like pity, moral outrage, fear.

If you and I are having a single thought of violence or hatred against anyone in the world at this moment, we are contributing to the wounding of the world.

Cowards are cruel, but the brave love mercy and delight to save.

In order to be cruel we have to close our hearts to the suffering of the other.

One who becomes compassionate to the cruel will ultimately become cruel to the compassionate

The highest religious and spiritual ideals of any faith would invite us to a compassion for all lives destroyed by the violence that plagues us.

I believe we are still so innocent. The species are still so innocent that a person who is apt to be murdered believes that the murderer, just before he puts the final wrench on his throat, will have enough compassion to give him one sweet cup of water.

Whoever feels mercy for the cruel is bound to eventually be cruel to the merciful.

I don't like how cruel humans can be.

It's very easy to look at the world and think this is all so cruel and so mean. It's important to not become bitter from it.

How can we speak of right and justice if we take an innocent creature and shed its blood? How can we pray to God for mercy if we ourselves have no mercy? Nobel laureate in literature.

A DIVINE IMAGE Cruelty has a human heart, And Jealousy a human face; Terror the human form divine, And Secresy the human dress. The human dress is forged iron, The human form a fiery forge, The human face a furnace sealed, The human heart its hungry gorge.

Look, it's terrible, I know, but weakness really, really bugs me, to the point that if there is a wounded bird on the sidewalk, I look at it and I go: I think I'll just kick it.