c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
My God, what do we want? What does any human being want? Take away an accident of pigmentation of a thin layer of our outer skin and there is no difference between me and anyone else. All we want is for that trivial difference to make no difference. What can I say to a man who asks that? All I can do is try to explain to him why he asks the question. You have looked at us for years as different from you that you may never see us really. You don’t understand because you think of us as second-class humans. We have been passive and accommodating through so many years of your insults and delays that you think the way things used to be is normal. When the good-natured, spiritual-singing boys and girls rise up against the white man and demand to be treated like he is, you are bewildered. All we want is what you want, no less and no more. (Chapter 13).
— Shirley Chisholm, Unbought And Unbossed
The Rights Revolutions too have given us ideals that educated people today take for granted but that are virtually unprecedented in human history, such as that people of all races and creeds have equal rights, that women should be free from all forms of coercion, that children should never, ever be spanked, that students should be protected from bullying, and that there’s nothing wrong with being gay. I don’t find it at all implausible that these are gifts, in part, of a refined and widening application of reason.
— Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined
We cordially believe in the rights of property. We think that normally and in the long run the rights of humanity, coincide with the rights of property... But we feel that if in exceptional cases there is any conflict between the rights of property and the rights of man, then we must stand for the rights of man.
— Theodore Roosevelt
It’s not our place to judge the guilt or innocence of the prisoners, Nurse Webster. The sooner you learn that the better. Any other approach just leads to conflicts of duty and undermines the smooth running of the institution. We are here to ensure that the prisoners are dealt with firmly and professionally. It’s up to their lawyers to handle matters pertaining to their sentences.
— Rachel Dax, After The Night
Fallujah was a Guernica with no Picasso. A city of 300,000 was deprived of water, electricity, and food, emptied of most of its inhabitants who ended up parked in camps. Then came the methodical bombing and recapture of the city block by block. When soldiers occupied the hospital, The New York Times managed to justify this act on grounds that the hospital served as an enemy propaganda center by exaggerating the number of casualties. And by the way, just how many casualties were there? Nobody knows, there is no body count for Iraqis. When estimates are published, even by reputable scientific reviews, they are denounced as exaggerated. Finally, the inhabitants were allowed to return to their devastated city, by way of military checkpoints, and start to sift through the rubble, under the watchful eye of soldiers and biometric controls.
— Jean Bricmont, Humanitarian Imperialism: Using Human Rights to Sell War
All those who prefer peace to power, and happiness to glory should thank the colonized people for their civilizing mission. By liberating themselves, they made Europeans more modest, less racist, and more human. Let us hope that the process continues and that the Americans are obliged to follow the same course. When one’s own cause is unjust, defeat can be liberating.
— Jean Bricmont, Humanitarian Imperialism: Using Human Rights to Sell War
Trust yourself and do what you want to do!!
— Clapp Indonesia
Don't worry.When life puts you down,hope will push you up
— Mohammed Sekouty
I CHOOSE to live by choice not by chance, to be motivated not manipulated, to be useful not used, to make change not excuses, to excel not compete. I CHOOSE self-esteem not self pity. I choose to listen to my inner voice, NOT TO LISTEN TO THE RANDOM OPINIONS OF OTHERS.
— Auliq Ice
Keep positive.Stay focused.Stand strong.Fight on.
— Matshona Dhliwayo
If you are unmotivated to succeed, no one can help you.If you are determined to succeed, no one can stop you.
— Matshona Dhliwayo
All right, so give me some idea of what you can do," says Haymitch.I can’t do anything," says Peeta, "unless you count baking bread."Sorry, I don’t. Katniss. I already know you’re handy with a knife,” says Haymitch.Not really. But I can hunt,” I say. “With a bow and arrow.”And you’re good?” asks Haymitch.I have to think about it. I’ve been putting food on the table for four years. That’s no small task. I’m not as good as my father was, but he’d had more practice. I’ve better aim than Gale, but I’ve had more practice. He’s a genius with traps and snares. “I’m all right,” I say.
— Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games
Those who create are rare; those who cannot are numerous. Therefore, the latter are stronger.
— Coco Chanel
You cannot help being a female, and I should be something of a fool were I to discount your talents merely because of their housing.
— Laurie R. King, The Beekeeper's Apprentice
We don't choose our talents
—  but we needn't hide them in a napkin because they are not just what we want.
Critasism is just a way of saying i'm jelous of your talents
— Rayvon L. Browne
Be equal to your talent, not your age. At times let the gap between them be embarrassing.
— Yevgeny Yevtushenko
To want a gift and not receive it,that is a life of torture. To have a gift and lose it--that is eternal hell.
— J. Scott Featherstone, Hallelujah - The Story of the Coming Forth of Handel's Messiah
The greatest talents often lie buried out of sight.
— Plautus
You know." he said, resting the fiddle in his lap, "once you love something enough--enough to let it consume you completely--it becomes part of you, even when it's buried and quiet.
— Elle Cosimano, The Suffering Tree
God is not looking at your abilities, talents, self-worth to be qualified to be his disciple
— Sunday Adelaja
Fairness is one of the most significant traits in wisdom, the fairer you are, the wiser you become.
— Pearl Zhu, Talent Master: 199+ Questions to See Talent from Different Angles
Wouldn't it be great to be gifted? In fact... It turns out that choices lead to habits. Habits become talents. Talents are labeled gifts. You're not born this way, you get this way.
— Seth Godin
It's funny the things dreams can do to you.
— Jane Nevin
I want you to identify your strengths or talents and to find something about yourself that makes you unique and special and refer to that image each time you find yourself feeling insecure or unsure.
— Carlos Wallace, The Other 99 T.Y.M.E.S: Train Your Mind to Enjoy Serenity
Many people go through their whole lives having no real sense of what their talents may be, or if they have any to speak of. Human resources are like natural resources; they’re often buried deep. You have to go looking for them, they’re not just lying around on the surface.
— Ken Robinson
Our talents come so easily to use that we acquire a false sense of security: Doesn't everyone see the world as I do? Doesn't everyone feel a sense of impatience to get this project started? Doesn't everyone want to avoid conflict and find the common ground? Can't everyone see the obstacles lying in wait if we proceed down this path? Our talents feel so natural to us that they seem to be common sense.
— Marcus Buckingham
His unique skill had always been to absorb the talents and knowledge of others, use what he needed and discard the rest. He never allowed anyone to get to close. He kept the world at arm's length in order to look down on it.
— Christopher Fowler, On the Loose
Writing is my passion. It’s in my blood like a talent is. Like dancing, or singing, or drawing, I write. I can never stop writing. It helps me to express everything I’m afraid to talk about out loud when I need to say it the most. It’s my pacifier in a way...
— Melissa C. Hamilton
Every human being has talents that are just waiting to be uncovered.
— Tom Rath, Strengths Finder 2.0
How can we explain such inclinations? They are forces within us that come from a deeper place than conscious words can express.They draw us to certain experiences and away from others.
— Robert Greene, Mastery
God has given different gifts for different people. There is no basis for feeling inferior to another who has a different gift. Once it is realised that we shall be judged by the gift we have received, rather than the gift we have not, one is completely delivered from a false sense of inferiority.
— Fulton J. Sheen
We don't just come from the womb bearing our talents. They grow from all the things we learn.
— Eleanor Brown, The Weird Sisters
It was as natural and obvious to me as breathing. So I assumed that everyone else was doing it too. When I realized that everyone else was not doing it -- that they couldn't do it even if they tried -- I told myself, 'I'm different from other people, so the life I live will have to be different from theirs.
— Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
There are many lights in the shadows and many shadows in the lights; lots of talents in the shades, lots of incompetents in the luminosities.
— Mehmet Murat ildan
Only the passionate were immortal, it seemed. If you fought, screwed, screamed, laughed, or otherwise experienced life intensely, for better or worse, you left a record. Those who lived a quiet, well-behaved, well-tempered life? Gone without a trace.
— Magnus Flyte, City of Dark Magic
The little bit you and me might change the world," Malloy smiled, "it wouldnt show up until a hundred years after we were dead. We'd never see it.""But it'd be there.
— James  Jones, From Here to Eternity
Never regard study as a duty but as an enviable opportunity to learn to know the liberating influence of beauty in the realm of the spirit for your own personal joy and to the profit of the community to which your later works belong."~Albert Einstein"Einstein is referring to ones 'legacy' and its intended future recipients as being willfully purposed to benefit them on their journey through this gift of life given to us by God
— R. Alan Woods, The Journey Is the Destination: A Book of Quotes With Commentaries
What should our second generation have done, what should it do with the knowledge of the horrors of the extermination of the Jews? We should not believe we can comprehend the incomprehensible, we may not compare the incomparable, we may not inquire because to inquire is to make the horrors an object of discussion, even if the horrors themselves are not questioned, instead of accepting them as something in the face of which we can only fall silent in revulsion, shame and guilt. Should we only fall silent in revulsion, shame and guilt? To what purpose?
— Bernhard Schlink, The Reader
A thing which I regret, and which I will try to remedy some time, is that I have never in my life planted a walnut. Nobody does plant them nowadays—when you see a walnut it is almost invariably an old tree. If you plant a walnut you are planting it for your grandchildren, and who cares a damn for his grandchildren?
— George Orwell
We stopped you from going, didn't we? Me and Shiva. Our birth?"Don't be silly. Can you imagine me giving up this?" he said sweeping his hand to indicate family, Missing, the home he'd made out of a bungalow. "I've been blessed. My genius was to know long ago that money alone wouldn't make me happy. Or maybe that's my excuse for not leaving you a huge fortune! I certainly could have made more money if that had been my goal. But one thing I won't have is regrets. My VIP patients often regret so many things on their deathbeds. They regret the bitterness they'll leave in people's hearts. They realize the no money, no church service, no eulogy, no funeral procession no matter how elaborate, can remove the legacy of a mean spirit.Of course, you and I have seen countless deaths among the poor. Their only regret surely is being born poor, suffering from birth to death. You know, in the book of Job, Job says to God, 'You should've taken me straight from the womb to the tomb! Why the in-between part, why life, if it was just to suffer?' Something like that. For the poor, death is at least the end of suffering.
— Abraham Verghese, Cutting for Stone
we will always be with u. we internalize traits we observe in others as a way to honor and remeber them. we are all living memorials
— Jomny Sun, Everyone's a Aliebn When Ur a Aliebn Too: A Book
We are a continuum. Just as we reach back to our ancestors for our fundamental values, so we, as guardians of that legacy, must reach ahead to our children and their children. And we do so with a sense of sacredness in that reaching.
— Paul Tsongas
Maybe I wanted to have kids because you want to leave behind lessons, leave behind everything that matters to you. That's how you touch the world. But I have to reconsider what it's like to leave a legacy.
— Mattie Stepanek
Greatness must be measured by the transfer of success to future generations
— Mlungisi Simelane
Unfortunately his Zen training never quite produced in him a Zen-like calm or inner serenity, and that too is part of his legacy. He was often tightly coiled and impatient, traits he made no effort to hide. Most people have a regulator between their mind and mouth that modulates their brutish sentiments and spikiest impulses. Not Jobs. He made a point of being brutally honest. "My job is to say when something sucks rather than sugar coat it," he said. This made him charismatic and inspiring, yet also, to use the technical term, an asshole at times.
— Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs
On opening night, standing under the Rogers's marquee, [Lin] realized that if Eliza's struggle was the element of Hamilton's story that had inspired him the most, then the show itself was a part of her legacy.
— Jeremy McCarter, Hamilton: The Revolution
Serving [Hamilton's] legacy didn't just mean commemorating him, though: It also meant continuing his work. [Eliza] crusaded against slavery, as Hamilton had. And this widow of an orphan helped to found the first private orphanage in New York. That's the real power of a legacy: We tell stories of people who are gone because like any powerful stories, they have the potential to inspire, and to change the world.
— Jeremy McCarter, Hamilton: The Revolution
Some people want you to call them rabbi; some people want you to call them American; some people want you to admire their tats. We’ve all got our facades. At least the dean’s self-qualifier is based on merit. Can you say the same about your tattoos? Come on, he’s a sad man. Leave him alone.
— Michael Benzehabe
we're just paper on a shelf, in the end
— Rachel Caine, Paper and Fire
...to ride well to hounds is simply a diversion. It leaves no record. But already, my dear Charlotte, you have created something, a legacy.
— Daisy Goodwin, The Fortune Hunter
They're funny things, legacies are. They can make a person's good-doings extend beyond his or her lifetime, and burden everyone else around who's related to live up to or better it. But they're always very important to maintain to the best of one's ability because that's as close to immortality one can get.
— Lauren Lola, An Absolute Mind
I don’t call it "Life Insurance," I call it "Love Insurance." We buy it because we want to leave a legacy for those we love.
— Farshad Asl
Living to create an earthly legacy is a short-sighted goal.
— Rick Warren, The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here for?
But the most wonderful thing of all, our highest achievement and the one thing for which I pray we will always be remembered, is stuffing wads of polyester into an anatomically incorrect, cartoonish ideal of one of nature's most fearsome predators for no other reason than to soothe a child.
— Rick Yancey, The Last Star
The first casualty of war is innocence. Don’t be so eager to find this out. I assure you, Andraste, war is ugly.” Legacy by SL Buckley
— SL Buckley
When we don’t care about what our government is doing, we are also saying to the next generation that we are not interested in the possible burdens that we are passing on to them.
— Rob Parker
The souls of men are not measured by what they have done, but by what they leave behind.
— Anonymous
Don Ricardo wanted a successor worthy of himself. Jorge would always be cocooned in the privileges of his class, hiding from his mediocrity in creature comforts. Penelope, the beautiful Penelope, was a woman, and therefore a treasure, not a treasurer. Julian, who had the soul of a poet, and therefore the soul of a murderer, fulfilled all the requirements. It was only a question of time.
— Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind
It must be great to spend time in a spot and if you walk away, it’s so much better than before because of something you did.
— Dan Groat, Monarchs and Mendicants
Love it, Do it, Be in it, Become it until it regenerates in your legacy.
— Goitsemang Mvula
He had become, through a combination of heritage and character, a keeper of the national conscience.
— Barbara W. Tuchman, The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War, 1890-1914
‪#‎Legacy‬Its all by birth;we hardly can change,individual born with own limits & abilities.-13.04.2016
— Gourab Banerjee
A worthy legacy is the irrevocable consequence of dreaming.
— R.A.Delmonico
Leave your legacy--not in possessions or accolades--but in moments. Moments that matter.
— Alicia M. Smith, Common Stones: A glimpse into several different worlds, in an effort to become more acquainted with our own
You lose track of time when you're deep in conservation with an otherworldly being made of pure Loric energy.
— Pittacus Lore, The Fate of Ten
Respect for the truth comes close to being the basis for all morality. Something cannot emerge from nothing.
— Frank Herbert, Dune
Instead of using their vastly increased material and technical resources to build a wonder-city, they built slums; and they thought it right and advisable to build slums because slums, on the test of private enterprise, "paid", whereas the wonder-city would, they thought, have been an act of foolish extravagance, which would, in the imbecile idiom of the financial fashion, have "mortgaged the future"; though how the construction to-day of great and glorious works can impoverish the future, no man can see until his mind is beset by false analogies from an irrelevant accountancy.
— Richard Davenport-Hines, Universal Man: The Lives of John Maynard Keynes
You Tavi,” he answered her, putting her mind to rest. “You’re his legacy, everything he was, he taught you, passed himself on through you in a father daughter bond. He was very proud of the young woman you’ve become, and he loved you greatly, he will always live on in your heart. And one day you’ll pass on some of what he taught you to others, then he’ll continue to live on through them too, that way he’ll never be forgotten or truly gone. Every day something you do will remind you of him and you’ll remember him with love and affection, that’s a great legacy to leave behind Tavi.
— Sallyann Phillips, Angel's Blood
At a certain point, your life is more about your legacy to your kids than anything else.
— Mitch Albom, The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto
In the world, success is measured in terms of legacy, what we leave behind. In God's kingdom, success is measured by what we send on ahead.
— Ron Brackin
This isn't about your reputation. Our job right now is to make sure that there to ARE future historians.
— Stephen L. Carter, Back Channel
…what have you accumulated from the past—what are you in the process of accumulating that will be passed on, if not deliberately, then accidentally? Is this accumulation the best of what has been and the best of what is currently being written, sung, and created? Is it wise? And if not, what will be the next generation’s inheritance, your children’s legacy?
— Rosalie De Rosset, Unseduced and Unshaken: The Place of Dignity in a Woman's Choices
vocations almost always involve tasks that transcend a lifetime. They almost always involve throwing yourself into a historical process. They involve compensating for the brevity of life by finding membership in a historic commitment.
— David Brooks
The kind of legacy you leave will only reflect the kind of life you lived.
— Andrena Sawyer
You don’t have to be dead to leave a legacy.
— Onyi Anyado
The past lives through us. We are its legacy.
— Marty Rubin
Leave a legacy every hour every day in some way with something or someone.
— Robert J. Braathe
Be careful how you live your life, millions are watching you. You may be inspiring or uninspiring many.
— Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha
The questions that we must ask ourselves, and that our historians and our children will ask of us, are these: How will what we create compare with what we inherited? Will we add to our tradition or will we subtract from it? Will we enrich it or will we deplete it?
— Leon Wieseltier
The bonsai grower knows that if she can give life to a product that lives forever and perpetually adds value to the lives of others, she has not only a success but a legacy.
— Steven Berglas, Reclaiming the Fire: How Successful People Overcome Burnout
Legacy proves ones mettle and one's karma.
— Aporva Kala, Life... Love... Kumbh...
Of the things I had not known when I started out, I think the most important was the degree to which the legacy of the McCarthy period still lived. It had been almost seven years since Joe McCarthy had been censured when John Kennedy took office, and most people believed that his hold on Washington was over. ... among the top Democrats, against whom the issue of being soft on Communism might be used, and among the Republicans, who might well use the charge, it was still live ammunition. ...McCarthyism still lingered ... The real McCarthyism went deeper in the American grain than most people wanted to admit ... The Republicans’ long, arid period out of office [twenty years, ended by the Eisenhower administration], accentuated by Truman’s 1948 defeat of Dewey, had permitted the out-party in its desperation, to accuse the leaders of the governing party of treason. The Democrats, in the wake of the relentless sustained attacks on Truman and Acheson over their policies in Asia, came to believe that they had lost the White House when they lost China. Long after McCarthy himself was gone, the fear of being accused of being soft on Communism lingered among the Democratic leaders. The Republicans had, of course, offered no alternative policy on China (the last thing they had wanted to do was suggest sending American boys to fight for China) and indeed there was no policy to offer, for China was never ours, events there were well outside our control, and our feudal proxies had been swept away by the forces of history. But in the political darkness of the time it had been easy to blame the Democrats for the ebb and flow of history.The fear generated in those days lasted a long time, and Vietnam was to be something of an instant replay after China. The memory of the fall of China and what it did to the Democrats, was, I think, more bitter for Lyndon Johnson than it was for John Kennedy. Johnson, taking over after Kennedy was murdered and after the Kennedy patched-up advisory commitment had failed, vowed that he was not going to be the President of the United States who lost the Great Society because he lost Saigon. In the end it would take the tragedy of the Vietnam War and the election of Richard Nixon (the only political figure who could probably go to China without being Red-baited by Richard Nixon) to exorcise those demons, and to open the door to China.
— David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest
A legacy is not about what you did while you were there it is what happens when you are gone
— Darrell Waltrip
Juggling and balancing effectively required that we make clear, legacy-driven choices about what we're trying to keep in the air and how we sequence our movements down the beam. Because the ultimate grade in life is not based on how far and fast we've walked the beam or how many things we’ve juggled—it’s based on how much we've enjoyed the exercise.
— Eric C. Sinoway, Howard's Gift: Uncommon Wisdom to Inspire Your Life's Work
We have an infinite ability to make an impact but we have a finite time here to make a difference and to leave some sort of legacy
— Thomas Narofsky, You are Unstoppable!: Unleash Your Inspired Life
Each of us play a unique role in the history of life. What legacy do you want to live behind?
— Lailah Gifty Akita
I preserve my worldin journals so my children can eat without me
— Nikki Skies
Every Moment of your life is a new Page in your Book. Some Sentences you can’t change, even whole Pages. But you decide how your Book ends.
— John M. Eaton
If you want to leave a legacy...leave it now, every day of your life, not just after you are gone or only as a result of a narrowly defined way of contributing. With every thought, word, and deed you leave something behind. You get to choose whether you leave a legacy of impossibility or possibility, of denigration, or celebration, of unkindness, or kindness, of judgment, or acceptance, of struggles or grace, of discouragement or encouragement, of frailty or strength, of tears of laughter, of fear or love. What is n your heart to leave as a legacy, in this moment...and now this one?
— Cathy Drew. Poet
The things you do for yourself are gone when you're gone, but the things you do for others become legacy.What do you wanna be remembered as?
— Ziad K. Abdelnour
As the leaves randomly fell, she contemplated how they sacrificially gave up their essence to sustain new life. Or was it the tree’s sacrifice? Each leaf was a part of Gaia’s play. Their final act: to decompose so a new level of soil could be made, an earthen writing tablet for the next layer of history to be recorded. One generation became the groundwork for the next. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Nothing was exempt, not even the leaves.
— Jesikah Sundin, Legacy
Respond to your ability, play your part and make your mark in history.
— Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha
... a man could build whatever monuments he wanted in the worlds of politics, sports, entertainment, and business, but if they come at the expense of his children, then he has failed. Once the attention fades and the crowds stop cheering his name and his accomplishments are little more than fine print in a history book, the only thing that truly survives him is his child. That is his legacy. That is what defines him. All else is but a footnote.
— Steve Pemberton, A Chance in the World: An Orphan Boy, a Mysterious Past, and How He Found a Place Called Home
Secrets upon secrets were weaving into a strange and mysterious fabric that would ultimately clothe his future.
— Jesikah Sundin, Legacy
Their leafy whispers delighted her, and she promised her confidentiality by gently touching the trunks of both trees. They had held her secrets close to their hearts, she could do no less.
— Jesikah Sundin, Legacy
Multi-colored lights flashed and glared on the wet road and cast eerie reflections, reminiscent of artistic surrealism. Fillion imagined that his distress and anger swirled and moved with the refracted lights, creating an urban masterpiece of demented fury.
— Jesikah Sundin, Legacy
You are not dead, until every person who knew you is dead as well." Where did I hear that? It doesn't matter. There is a village in my head.
— Neil Gaiman, Signal to Noise
The scenic route was a paved graveyard of dreams, but Fillion hoped his would rise from the ashes, marking the moment when he would finally own his life.
— Jesikah Sundin, Legacy
Leaf felt buried beneath the remains of their prior life, the ashes coating every part of who he thought he was in this community.
— Jesikah Sundin, Legacy
We're all just songs in the end. If we are lucky.
— George R.R. Martin, A Storm of Swords
Someone once said that every man is trying to live up to his father's expectations or make up for their father's mistakes....
— Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream
Live today the way you want to be remembered tomorrow.
— Dillon Burroughs
It’s not about keeping up the population, it’s about passing on who we are and what we've learned, so things keep going. So we don’t just end.
— Isaac Marion, Warm Bodies
Everyone leaves a legacy, whether they want to or not. The question is, “What kind of legacy will you leave?
— Dillon Burroughs
What you do with your resources in this life is your autobiography.
— Randy Alcorn, Money, Possessions and Eternity
The actions you take today not only impact you
—  they influence generations. Every matter matters for eternity.
Each person leaves a legacy -- a single, small piece of herself, which makes richer each individual life and the collective life of humanity as a whole.
— John     Nichols, The Nirvana Blues
What we need now is a nation of great people who live to positively impact others and build enduring legacies
— Fela Durotoye
Come out into the world about you, be it either wide or limited. Sympathize, not in thought only, but in action, with all about you. Make yourself known and felt for something that would be loved and missed, in twenty thousand little ways, if you were to die; then your life will be a happy one, believe me.
— Charles Dickens
A childhood filled with adventures, happiness and unabated love.If only I could remember ...
— Lynda Fisher
Thus it is that no cruelty whatsoever passes by without impact. Thus it is that we always pay dearly for chasing after what is cheap.
— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956
Some things are not forgiveable. Deliberate cruelty is not forgiveable. It is the most unforgiveable thing in my opinion, and the one thing in which I have never, ever been guilty.
— Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire
Something caught in her throat at this second thanks, when she'd threatened him so brutally. When you're a monster, she thought, you are thanked and praised for not behaving like a monster. She would like to restrain from cruelty and receive no admiration for it.
— Kristin Cashore, Graceling
I think cruelty is just loneliness disguised as bitterness.
— Tom Hiddleston
Deliberate cruelty is unforgivable.--Blanche Dubois
— Tennessee Williams, Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire
In a cruel land, you either learned to laugh at cruelty or spent your life weeping.
— Robert Jordan, A Crown of Swords
If we are not given the option to live without violence, we are given the choice to center our meals around harvest or slaughter, husbandry or war. We have chosen slaughter. We have chosen war. That's the truest version of our story of eating animals.Can we tell a new story?
— Jonathan Safran Foer, Eating Animals
Cruelty is easy, cheap and rampant.
— Brené Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are
We are cruel enough without meaning to be.
— John Updike, Rabbit Is Rich
Probably human cruelty is fixed and eternal. Only styles change.
— Martin Amis, Time's Arrow
It's the worst kind of cruelty — the thoughtless kind. You can't cope with it.
— L.M. Montgomery, Anne's House of Dreams
When someone would mistreat, misinform, misuse, misguide, mishandle, mislead… or any other "mis"… to others, they’re obviously missing something from their lives.
— Donald L. Hicks, Look into the stillness
I'm afraid it's not nonsense," Genghis said, shaking his turbaned head and continuing his story. "As I was saying before the little girl interrupted me, the baby didn't dash off with the other orphans. She just sat there like a sack of flour. So I walked over to her and gave her a kick to get her moving.""Excellent idea!" Nero said. "What a wonderful story this is! And then what happened?""Well, at first it seemed like I'd kicked a big hole in the baby," Genghis said, his eyes shining, "which seemed lucky, because Sunny was a terrible athlete and it would have been a blessing to put her out of her misery."Nero clapped his hands. "I know just what you mean, Genghis," he said. "She's a terrible secretary as well.""But she did all that stapling," Mr. Remora protested. "Shut up and let the coach finish his story," Nero said."But when I looked down," Genghis continued, "I saw that I hadn't kicked a hole in a baby. I'd kicked a hole in a bag of flour! I'd been tricked!""That's terrible!" Nero cried.
— Lemony Snicket, The Austere Academy
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 if you let it creep back into things from inside you?
— Margaret Mahy, The Changeover
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.
— Brigid Brophy
It was the first time I saw the look on the face of the people I robbed: it was ugly. I was the cause of such ugliness, and the only thing that made me feel was a cruel pleasure which, I thought, was bound to transfigure my own face, to make me resplendent. I was then 23 years old. From that moment on, I felt capable of advancing in cruelty.
— Jean Genet, The Thief's Journal
The only thing worse than cruelty is delegated cruelty.
— Matthew Scully, Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy
Sometimes it's a revelation, even to me, how much more comfortable I am with cruelty than with kindness.
— Amy Engel, The Roanoke Girls
I think unfortunately society nowadays picks upon the fact that we should all fit into this perfect little box, perfect little label. Everybody has to be labelled, because that's what makes human beings feel comfortable, I know what that is. If they can't do that, they start thinking that's obviously not right.
— BBC Radio 4
No decent person deliberately chooses to be violent or cruel. We must remove our blinkers and learn that in order to live according to our true values, we need to stop viewing animals as commodities to be used, abused and killed for our own selfish benefit.
— Mango Wodzak, The Eden Fruitarian Guidebook
When we're struck with cruelty, we can either inflict the same on others like it's a rite of passage, or decide that here is where it stops.
— Joyce Rachelle
She builds people up because she knows what it is like to be torn down.
— Shannon L. Alder
So muchhuman cruelty is simplyincidental is simplybrainless. Simply nocommon sense. You couldtake the entirety of thecommon sense of humansand put it in the palm ofyour hand and still haveroom for your dick.
— Anne Carson
I wish something would happen to me, something that would show me exactly how cruel and jealous and vengeful I can be. Then I could go back to gentleness because I chose it over brutality for its own sake, not because I didn't have the courage to be cruel. I might even like cruelty. I doubt very much that I would, but I ought to find out.
— Peter S. Beagle, A Fine and Private Place
[Men] act in response to an outward situation, and on being presented with an opportunity to conform to a pattern. If the pattern gives licence to cruelty, so much the better. They take advantage of the licence so thoughtlessly, so thoroughly, that it becomes perfectly clear: the generality of mankind are only waiting for the chance, only waiting for outward circumstance to sanction brutality and allow them to be cruel and brutal to their heart's content.
— Thomas Mann, Lotte in Weimar: The Beloved Returns
Cruelty is not something you can just sugar coat with a smile, with laughter, with a hug or with an act of kindness. It is a diabolical behaviour that will keep popping up behind that smile, behind that laughter, behind that hug and behind that act of kindness. 'A man who is kind benefits himself, but a cruel man hurts himself.' (Proverbs 11:17)
— Euginia Herlihy
...some of it's how he acts like he's King Shit of Turd Mountain, but mostly it's that he's sneaky, and he likes to hurt
— Stephen King, The Green Mile
I'm not a cruel man. I mean, technically I'm not a man at all.
— Erin Bow, The Scorpion Rules
There is an undercurrent of savagery in the human psyche. Anyone who forgets this and doesn’t guard against it, risks being swept away by it.
— Lance Conrad, The Price of Nobility
He who makes fun of a short and fat man’s weight is much less cruel than he who makes fun of his height.
— Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Happiness is a beautiful fruit that tastes of cruelty.
— Agnes Varda
God is so cruel," she murmured reflectively, as though answering him."Yes," he admitted, from the vantage point of going blind. "Though maybe people are kinder if He made them that way.""You've run with a different crowd. Rich people are nicer to rich people.""Sure. Yes. That's why I've washed up here. Rich people couldn't have been nicer to me.
— Edward Hoagland, In the Country of the Blind: A Novel
I always take credit for my acts of cruelty. To do otherwise is cowardice.
— Neal Shusterman, Challenger Deep
Before, they had been beasts, their instincts fitly adapted to their surroundings, and happy as living things may be. Now they stumbled in the shackles of humanity, lived in a fear that never died, fretted by a law they could not understand; their mock-human existence, begun in an agony, was one long internal struggle, one long dread of Moreau- and for what? It was the wantonness of it that stirred me.
— H.G. Wells
My mother always says that indifference is the greatest cruelty.
— Mark T. Mustian
Words can be as deadly as bullets. But bullets are faster acting. ~ Brandon Hull
— Jayden Hunter, Undressed To The Nines
In knowing "what's best" for our patients, we tyrannize them with our good intentions. Behind our benevolent persona, our ruthless shadow is letting out the clutch.
— guggenhbuhl-craig
…did it make a difference if the remark never got back to the person about whom it was made? She thought not. The harm is done when the words are uttered: that is the act of belittlement, the act of diminishing the other, and it is that act which would cause pain to the victim. You said that about me? The wrong was located in the making of the cruel remark, rather than in the pain it might later cause.
— Alexander McCall Smith, The Novel Habits of Happiness
…one of those dreadful boarding schools. It was down on the South Coast. I think some very unpleasant things happened there…. So many lives were distorted by such cruelty. I know so many men who had to put up with that, so many….
— Alexander McCall Smith, The Novel Habits of Happiness
I know about sureness,' said Didactylos. 'I remember, before I was blind, I went to Omnia once. And in your Citadel I saw a crowd stoning a man to death in a pit. Ever seen that?''It has to be done,' Brutha mumbled. 'So the soul can be shriven and-''Don't know about the soul. Never been that kind of philosopher,' said Didactylos. 'All I know is, it was a horrible sight.''The state of the body is not-''Oh, I'm not talking about the poor bugger in the pit,' said the philosopher. 'I'm talking about the people throwing the stones. They were sure all right. They were sure it wasn't them in the pit. You could see it in their faces. So glad it wan't them in the pit that they were throwing just as hard as they could.
— Terry Pratchett, Small Gods
Such a brute should underneath all his braggart tricks, his viciousness, his vileness, be a coward. But I am convinced that he was not. Because even cowardice requires a certain degree of sensitivity, and a certain value for life.
— Warren Eyster, The Goblins of Eros
People talk sometimes of 'bestial' cruelty, but that's a great injustice and insult to the beast; a beast can never be so cruel as a man, so artistically, so artfully cruel.
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky
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 all her fellow-men and women, that indifference to the sufferings which they cause which, whatever names else be given it, is the one true, terrible and lasting form of cruelty.
— Marcel Proust, Swann's Way
So who is cruel? You, cruel reader, you are.
— Johnny Rich, The Human Script
The only thing crueler than a cage sosmall that a bird can’t fly is a cage solarge that a bird thinks it can fly.
— Caroline Kepnes, You
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?
— Stephen King, 11/22/63
Of all mankind's unpleasant habits, sheer and willful cruelty is the most base, the least forgivable and, when carried to its extreme, perhaps the most horrific.
— Christopher Riche Evans, Mind In Chains
You don't repay kindness with needless cruelty.
— Gloria Naylor, Linden Hills
Don’t fool yourself: we all have a cruel streak. We keep it under lock and key either because we’re afraid of getting punished or because we believe this will somehow make a difference, make the world a better place.
— Tana French, Broken Harbour
Must then a Christ perish in torment in every age to save those that have no imagination?
— Bernard Shaw George
We are stronger than stigma, but until more celebrity role models openly discuss mental illness we will still be stereotyped as less than capable, by an upside down world that thinks reality television is actually normal behavior.
— Shannon L. Alder
It’s cruelty that gets to me. Still, it’s important to read about cruelty.“Why is it important?” Because when you read about it, it’s easier to recognize. That was always the hardest thing in the refugee camps—to hear the stories of the people who had been raped or mutilated or forced to watch a parent or a sister or a child be raped or killed. It’s very hard to come face-to-face with such cruelty. But people can be cruel in lots of ways, some very subtle. I think that’s why we all need to read about it. I think that’s one of the amazing things about Tennessee Williams’s plays. He was so attuned to cruelty—the way Stanley treats Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire. It starts with asides and looks and put-downs. There are so many great examples from Shakespeare—when Goneril torments King Lear or the way Iago speaks to Othello. And what I love about Dickens is the way he presents all types of cruelty. You need to learn to recognize these things right from the start. Evil almost always starts with small cruelties.
— Will Schwalbe, The End of Your Life Book Club
A suffering or tortured animal always filled her with such a surge of sympathy that it lifted her clean out of herself.
— L.M. Montgomery, Emily of New Moon
I have a high art: I hurt with cruelty those who would wound me.
— Archilochus
Courtesy is a silver lining around the dark clouds of civilization; it is the best part of refinement and in many ways, an art of heroic beauty in the vast gallery of man's cruelty and baseness.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
I close my eyes, knowing that afterward we will fall asleep together on our small mattress, as we do every night, listening to the wind in the palm trees outside our window, believing in our thick dreams that we are capable of nothing cruel.
— Andrew Porter, The Theory of Light and Matter
Decisiveness is often the art of timely cruelty.
— Henry Becque
Ordinary men wonder why those of only average intelligence so often rise to the highest levels of power, while highly intelligent people generally do not. They fail to understand that reaching the highest levels of power has nothing to do with admired attributes such as intelligence and competence. The predominant characteristic of those who rise to the highest levels of power is a total disregard for the consequences – including death – that will befall thousands, or hundreds of thousands, or millions of human beings if it is deemed necessary to attain his (or her) goals. Generally speaking, it is this total disregard for humanity that has distinguished ‘rulers’ throughout history.
— Dave Champion
And for Peter... well, sometimes cruelty is kindness in disguise. Sometimes pain is the best teacher. Sometimes it does you no harm to realize that there's a limit to what you can get away with.
— Mike Carey, The Devil You Know
But man, proud man,Dress'd in a little brief authority,Most ignorant of what he's most assur'd—His glassy essence—like an angry apePlays such fantastic tricks before high heavenAs makes the angels weep; who, with our spleens,Would all themselves laugh mortal.
— William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure
Silence!” Korbolo snapped. He eyed Duiker. “You are the historian who rode with Coltaine.”The historian faced him. “I am.”“You are a soldier.”“As you say.”“I do, and so you shall die with these soldiers, in a manner no different-““You mean to slaughter ten thousand unarmed men and women, Korbolo Dom?”“I mean to cripple Tavore before she even sets foot on this continent. I mean to make her too furious to think. I mean to crack that façade so she dreams of vengeance day and night, poisoning her every decision.”“You always fashioned yourself as the Empire’s harshest Fist, didn’t you, Korbolo Dom? As if cruelty’s a virtue…
— Steven Erikson, Deadhouse Gates
There is no redemption in a cruel man's love.
— Nenia Campbell, Locked and Loaded
Sometimes you can be so deeply wrapped up in a person that the only way to deal with it is to use cruelty to push them away.
— L.H. Cosway, The Nature of Cruelty
in every pleasure, cruelty has its place...
— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
It’s that I no longer know where I am. I seem to move around perfectly easily among people, to have perfectly normal relations with them. Is it possible, I ask myself, that all of them are participants in a crime of stupefying proportions? Am I fantasizing it all? I must be mad! Yet every day I see the evidences. The very people I suspect produce the evidence, exhibit it, offer it to me. Corpses. Fragments of corpses that they have bought for money.It is as if I were to visit friends, and to make some polite remark about the lamp in their living room, and they were to say, “Yes, it’s nice, isn’t it? Polish-Jewish skin it’s made of, we find that’s best, the skins of young Polish-Jewish virgins.” And then I go to the bathroom and the soap wrapper says, “Treblinka – 100% human stereate.” Am I dreaming, I say to myself? What kind of house is
— J.M. Coetzee, Elizabeth Costello
And the answer is: You are wrong. The Faeries are not gone. But they are no longer what they were. I watched it and did not help them, though I could have. I cheered. I cheered and I wept and I was glad. Perhaps I should not have been. Perhaps laughing at agony is a Fairy's game and I should not have moved my pieces on their board.
— Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two
There is no brutality and cruelty in battles and wars
—  in reality only the outcome matters.
To see human beings in agony, to see them covered in blood and to hear their death groans, makes people humble. It makes their spirits delicate, bright, peaceful. It's never at such times that we become cruel or bloodthirsty. No, it's on a beautiful spring afternoon like this that people suddenly become cruel. It's at a moment like this, don't you think, while one's vaguely watching the sun as it peeps through the leaves of the trees above a well-mown lawn? Every possible nightmare in the world, every possible nightmare in history, has come into being like this.
— Yukio Mishima, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion
Jack laughed behind him, a mirthless sound from a man who had been on the wrong end of life's ironies too many times.
— R.D. Ronald, The Elephant Tree
There is within me a knot of cruelty borne by the stream of love, much as our blood sometimes bears the seed of our destruction ...
— James Hurst, The Scarlet Ibis: The Collection of Wonder
All animals understand love and affection, but only man shows the propensity to place himself into the shoes of another life form
— The Cruxshadows
I’d known cruelty in a school—cruelty that would keep these amateurs up all night. But this kind of scene—crowds batting around a person because they thought he was weak—happened to be my personal trigger.
— Laura Anderson Kurk, Glass Girl
Grayson noticed me next to the lockers. He pointed at me then held his arms out magnanimously. “You’re welcome, new girl,” he said. “I just saved you from having to find a nice way to say no to the leg dragger.
— Laura Anderson Kurk, Glass Girl
Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people.
— C.G. Jung
What is most personal is most universal.
— Carl R. Rogers, On Becoming a Person: A Therapist's View of Psychotherapy