Cruel Life Quotes & Sayings

No man can live this life and emerge unchanged. He will carry, however faint, the imprint of the desert, the brand which marks the nomad; and he will have within him the yearning to return, weak or insistent according to his nature. For this cruel land can cast a spell which no temperate clime can match. — Wilfred Thesiger

My cruel fate hath warr'd with me in vain
Life, glory, worth, and all unmeasur'd skill
Beauty and grace, themselves in me fulfill
That many I surpass, and to the best attain. — Benvenuto Cellini

So, we, at this day, when we thought we should have found favor among our own countrymen, for that we preached unto them the gospel of peace, life, and eternal salvation; instead of favor, we have found bitter and cruel hatred. — Martin Luther

A careless word may kindle strife,
A cruel word may wreck a life;
A timely word may lessen stress,
A loving word may heal and bless. — Anonymous

What's more to do,
Which would be planted newly with the time,
As calling home our exiled friends abroad
That fled the snares of watchful tyranny,
Producing forth the cruel ministers
Of this dead butcher and his fiend-like queen,
Who, as 'tis thought, by self and violent hands
Took off her life; this, and what needful else
That calls upon us, by the grace of Grace
We will perform in measure, time, and place. — William Shakespeare

One of the obstacles to recognizing chronic mistreatment in relationships is that most abusive men simply don't seem like abusers. They have many good qualities, including times of kindness, warmth, and humor, especially in the early period of a relationship. An abuser's friends may think the world of him. He may have a successful work life and have no problems with drugs or alcohol. He may simply not fit anyone's image of a cruel or intimidating person. So when a woman feels her relationship spinning out of control, it is unlikely to occur to her that her partner is an abuser. — Lundy Bancroft

She didn't understand a damned thing about life except that it was arbitrary and cruel, and some people got away with murder while others made one tiny, careless mistake and paid a terrible price. — Liane Moriarty

Of course, being angry is pointless. Unproductive. They don't understand yet. That they are all waiting for that one phone call that will change everything. That every one of them will feel like me eventually. Because someone they love will die. It's one of life's cruel certainties. — Cynthia Hand

Yes, I know, because schools are cruel, illogical, and unfair. But the thing is, life is cruel, illogical, and unfair. That is why the education system works so well. If schools and teachers did a good job and inspired children and made them enthusiastic about every subject, they would only be sadly disappointed when they got out into the real world. Better to disappoint them when they're young. It is more important to learn to cope with disappointment than learn how to do long division." - Nanny Piggins — R.A. Spratt

If you are distant and misanthropic, selfish or cruel, you will find yourself alone in life and death. — Ann Brashares

Because I'm a civil rights activist, I am also an animal rights activist. Animals and humans suffer and die alike. Violence causes the same pain, the same spilling of blood, the same stench of death, the same arrogant, cruel and vicious taking of life. We shouldn't be a part of it. — Dick Gregory

Perfectly formed life, equally contingent, equally without purpose. Blind luck, to arrive in the world with your properly formed parts in the right place, to be born to parents who were loving, not cruel, or to escape, by geographical or social accident, war or poverty. And therefore to find it so much easier to be virtuous. — Ian McEwan

I recommend her to you, not as a husband but as an enthusiastic admirer of her work, acid and tender, hard as steel and delicate and fine as a butterfly's wing, lovable as a beautiful smile, and as profound and cruel as the bitterness of life. — Diego Rivera

It is of course evident that everything in one's religious life depends upon the sort of God one worships. The character of the worshiper must necessarily be molded by the character of the object worshipped. If it is a cruel and revengeful God, or a selfish and unjust God, the worshiper will be cruel, and revengeful, and selfish, and unjust, also. If it is a loving, tender, forgiving, unselfish God, the worshiper will be loving, and tender, and forgiving, and unselfish, as well. — Hannah Whitall Smith

Just imagine that the purpose of life is happinesss only-
then life becomes a cruel and senseless thing.You have to embrace what the wisdom of humanity,your intellect and your heart tell you: that the meaning of life is to serve the force that sent you into the world.Then life becomes a joy — Leo Tolstoy

I would rather quit public life at seventy, and quit it forever, than to retain public life at a sacrifice to my own self-respect. I will not vote for any law which will make fair for me and foul for another. The blacklist is the most cruel form of oppression ever devised by man for the infliction of suffering upon his weaker fellows. — Joseph Gurney Cannon

Silent lies are more venomous than cruel truths — Ben Oliveira

We, as Americans, do our level best to avoid being cruel to one another; we're led out of a diverse nation to come together and learn how to live with one another in a way that elevates everyone and our way of life. We've tried mightily to renew and imagine - imagine anew what it means to be free, what it means to be fair. — Mark Takano

A man can be a hero if he is a scientist, or a soldier, or a drug addict, or a disc jockey, or a crummy mediocre politician. A man can be a hero because he suffers and despairs; or because he thinks logically and analytically; or because he is sensitive; or because he is cruel. Wealth establishes a man as a hero, and so does poverty. Virtually any circumstance in a man's life will make him a hero to some group of people and has a mythic rendering in the culture
in literature, art, theater, or the daily newspapers. — Andrea Dworkin

Humankind has turned to world into a cruel and inhospitable place. The thing that makes it all bearable is the potential for loving companionship. — Christopher Earle

The love we seek overrules human nature. It has a wildness in it and a glory that we want more than life itself. Love never counts the cost, to itself or others, and nothing is as cruel as love. There is no love that does not pierce the hands and feet. — Jeanette Winterson

Everything starts with yourself, with you making up your mind about what you're going to do with your life. I tell kids that it's a cruel world, and that the world will bend them either left or right, and it's up to them to decide which way to bend. — Tony Dorsett

For the first time Vishal had understood what success truly meant. It came at a cost. It came at the expense of others' failure. It did not necessarily merit one's integrity, passion or zeal. It did not worry about the method either. It could not be swapped, lent or borrowed. It was a lonelier place. Smile to a mere few at expense of several heartbreaks. Yet if success was that important, he needed to value it. Life is cruel.

- Beginning with a Comma, Ch 10 — Amrit Sinha

WAR CHILD is the true story of Magdalena (Leni) Janic whose name appears on The Welcome Wall at Sydney's Darling Harbour. The story spans 100 years starting in pre WWII Nazi Germany and ends in the suburbs of Adelaide. It's a window into what life was like for a young illegitimate German girl growing up in poverty, coping with ostracism, bullying, abuse and dispossession as society was falling down around her and she becomes a refugee. But it's also a story of a woman's unconditional love for her family, the sacrifices she made and secrets she kept to protect them. Her ultimate secret was only revealed in a bizarre twist after her death and much to her daughter's (and author) surprise involved her. A memorable tear-jerker! A sad cruel story told with so much love. — Annette Janic

Of all the things that people do in the name of God, killing a girl because she doesn't bleed on her wedding night is among the most cruel. Yet the hymen
fragile, rarely seen, and pretty pointless
remains an object of worship among many religions and societies around the world ... it is frequently worth more than a human life. — Nicholas D. Kristof

I hate nice girls.
Just exchanging greetings with them will get them on your mind.
Start texting each other, and your heart will be set a flutter.
If they call you, you're done for.
Enjoy staring at your logs and grinning like a fool.
However, I won't get fooled again. That's what your kind calls kindness.
If you're nice to me, you're nice to others.
I always end up nearly forgetting that. Reality is cruel,
So I'm sure lies are a form of kindness.
Thus, I say kindness itself is also a lie.
I always ended up with these expectations.
And I always ended up with these misunderstandings.
And before I knew it, I stopped hoping.
A highly trained loner is once bitten, twice shy.
As a veteran on this battlefield of life, I've gotten used to losing.
That's why I always hate nice girls. - Hachiman Hikigaya — Wataru Watari

Barney's Dad was really bad so Barney hatched a plan
when his dad said "Eat your peas."
Barney shouted no and ran
Barney tricked his mean old dad and locked him in the cellar
Barney's Mom never found out where he'd gone,
Cause Barney didn't tell her.
There his dad spent his life eating mice and gruel
With every bite for fifty years
he was sorry he'd been cruel — Bill Watterson

Your belief in God is merely an escape from your monotonous, stupid and cruel life. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Forgiveness is an embrace, across all barriers, against all odds, in defiance of all that is mean and petty and vindictive and cruel in this life. — Kent Nerburn

A child's hope is that your father comes riding in on that white stallion and saves them. You can't make somebody love you the way you want them to love you, it's not a Leave it to Beaver type world. This isn't television. Life's a lot more cruel than that. — Jake Roberts

Here you are ... A beautiful girl with nothing to be ashamed of ... And yet you are afraid to look at me. Someone has been cruel to you ... Or perhaps life has been cruel.
"I don't know sir" I said, Though of course I knew perfectly well. — Arthur Golden

Criminal cases receive the attention of the press. The cruel and disagreeable things of life are more apt to get the newspaper space than the pleasant ones. It must be that most people enjoy hearing of and reading about the troubles of others. Perhaps men unconsciously feel that they rise in the general level as others go down. — Clarence Darrow

The whole process of life is a process of deterioration in which everything - and this is the most cruel law - continually gets worse. — Thomas Bernhard

A part of me will probably always be waitin' for her. And even when I get to the end of this life and she's not there, I think I'll still just wait. It's the cruel reality of love, I think - that once you find it, it's yours to carry. And even if you lose it and never find it back again, I think you still just keep on carrying it ... and waitin' - long after the curtain closes. — Laura Miller

I shall die soon ... Here at this Dros. And what will I have achieved in my life? I have no sons nor daughters. No living kin ... Few friends. They will say, 'Here lies Druss. He killed many and birthed none'."
"They will say more than that," said Virae suddenly. "They'll say, 'Here lies Druss the Legend, who was never mean, petty nor needlessly cruel. Here was a man who never gave in, never compromised his ideals, never betrayed a friend, never despoiled a woman and never used his strength against the weak.' They'll say 'He had no sons, but many a woman asleep with her babes slept more soundly for knowing Druss stood with the Drenai.' They'll say many things, whitebeard. Through many generations they will say them, and men with no strength will find strength when they hear them."
"That would be pleasant," said the old man, smiling. — David Gemmell

This cruel age has deflected me,
like a river from this course.
Strayed from its familiar shores,
my changeling life has flowed
into a sister channel.
How many spectacles I've missed:
the curtain rising without me,
and falling too. How many friends
I never had the chance to meet. — Anna Akhmatova

Sooner or later I will be faced with the fact that the world is helpless to meet my needs. And at that point, I will be left with two conclusions; that life is cruel or God is real. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

I've been thinking about the cruel mathematics of my life, looking at my sums & wishing I'd shown my work. — Jonathan Evison

I know life is hard, I think everyone knows that in their hearts, but why dos it have to be cruel, as well? Why does it have to bite? — Stephen King

I could easily have decided that life was cruel, that being black meant everything was stacked against me. — Ben Carson

His life had been ripped away from him without his being able to fight against it. That was difficult enough, but to know that the one woman that consumed his thoughts day and night, the one woman who captured his attention with a mere smile would never be his ...
It was beyond cruel. — Donna Grant

Sometimes I fear to write, even in fictional form, about things that really happened to me, about things that I really did, or about the numerous unattractive, cruel, or embarrassing thoughts that I have at one time or another entertained. Just as often, I find myself writing about disturbing or socially questionable acts and states of mind that have no real basis in my life at all, but which, I am afraid, people will quite naturally attribute to me when they read what I have written. — Michael Chabon

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

Some had come to look upon death as a mercy. Death meant warmth. Death was light. Life was cruel, cold, heavy and dark. Life was pain. Death was deliverance, and many would welcome it. Others doggedly clung to life and willed themselves to walk on. — Sage Steadman

Self-criticism, cruel, unsparing criticism that goes to the very root of the evil, is life and breath for the proletarian movement. — Rosa Luxemburg

He'd never forget what Naasir had said to him when Dmitri yelled that he didn't intend to bury another child and that Naasir needed to have a care for his life.
"Am I a person, Dmitri? Will you be sad if I die?"
Hardened and cruel though he'd become, the innocent question had shaken him. "Yes," he'd said, as honest in his answer as Naasir had been in his question. "You are a person. You are Naasir. I'll lose a piece of me if you die and it's a piece I'll never get back."
Naasir had stared at him for a long time before coming over to hug him. "Okay, Dmitri. I'm sorry. I didn't know I was a person before. — Nalini Singh

I missed him desperately, even though he'd said he hated me, even though his anger - the rampage at his house, the X through his yearbook page, the cruel way he withdrew from everyone - scared me. I didn't care if he wasn't my boyfriend, or even my friend. He was my Jonah. I felt more alone without him now than I'd ever felt before I met him. My life had a hole in it. — Natalie Standiford

Not my job to judge, boy." Baba Yaga filled and lit the pipe again. "But I do observe that its difficult to escape familiar patterns. When you live your life with cruel words, you look for people to give them to you. When you escape and evil stepmother, you take an uncaring bride. When your father throws you out, you love someone who won't love you back. And to keep yourself in cruelty, you're willing to risk head and hands on the mayors side board. Keep the pattern going. Hm." ~ Baba Yaga, Clockwork Fairy Tales: A Collection of Steampunk Fables, Steven Harper, Pg. 32. — Steven Harper

That was the splendid thing about life: Though it was cruel, it was also mysterious, filled with wonder and surprise; sometimes the surprises were so amazing that they qualified as miraculous, and by witnessing those miracles, a despondent person could discover a reason to live, a cynic could obtain unexpected relief from ennui, and a profoundly wounded boy could find the will to heal himself and medicine for melancholy. — Dean Koontz

It is my considered opinion that the human race (soi disant) is cruel, idiotic, sentimental, predatory, ungrateful, ugly, conceited and egocentric to the last ditch and that the occasional discovery of an isolated exception is as deliciously surprising as finding a sudden brazil nut in what you know to be five pounds of vanilla creams. These glorious moments, although not making life actually worth living, perhaps, at least make it pleasanter. — Noel Coward

But it was just her mind playing cruel tricks, and she tried to push away the irrational thought that Richard was still in there, waiting for someone to save his life. — Paul Pilkington

When you look at what C.S. Lewis is saying, his message is so anti-life, so cruel, so unjust. The view that the Narnia books have for the material world is one of almost undisguised contempt. At one point, the old professor says, 'It's all in Plato' - meaning that the physical world we see around us is the crude, shabby, imperfect, second-rate copy of something much better. I want to emphasize the simple physical truth of things, the absolute primacy of the material life, rather than the spiritual or the afterlife.

[The New York Times interview, 2000] — Philip Pullman

I would rather be kind and lose everything than cruel and gain many things. — Debasish Mridha

Life is so long, and too hard, and then it ends so cruel and sudden! — Margo Lanagan

That life - whatever else it is - is short. That fate is cruel but maybe not random. That Nature (meaning Death) always wins but that doesn't mean we have to bow and grovel to it. That maybe even if we're not always so glad to be here, it's our task to immerse ourselves anyway: wade straight through it, right through the cesspool, while keeping eyes and hearts open. And in the midst of our dying, as we rise from the organic and sink back ignominiously into the organic, it is a glory and a privilege to love what Death doesn't touch. — Donna Tartt

Delving into the past had unveiled a cruel lesson - that in the book of life it is perhaps best not to turn back pages; it was a path on which, whatever direction we took, we'd never be able to choose our own destiny. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

The thinking (person) must oppose all cruel customs, no matter how deeply rooted in tradition and surrounded by a halo. When we have a choice, we must avoid bringing torment and injury into the life of another. — Albert Schweitzer

The world was a merciless place. Hard and cruel. Except when you found someone to trust and love. Life, however fleeting, possessed meaning then. — Sophie Jordan

There is absolutely no experience, however terrible, or heartbreaking, or unjust, or cruel, or evil, which you can meet in the course of your earthly life, that can harm you if you but let Me teach you how to accept it with joy; and to react to it triumphantly as I did myself, with love and forgiveness and with willingness to bear the results of wrong done by others. Every trial, every test, every difficulty and seemingly wrong experience through which you may have to pass, is only another opportunity granted to you of conquering an evil thing and bringing out of it something to the lasting praise and glory of God. — Hannah Hurnard

So you see, the quality of humor is not a personal or a national monopoly. It's as free as salvation, and, I am afraid, far more widely distributed. But it has its value, I think. The hard and sordid things of life are too hard and too sordid and too cruel for us to know and touch them year after year without some mitigating influence, some kindly veil to draw over them, from time to time, to blur the craggy outlines, and make the thorns less sharp and the cruelties less malignant. — Mark Twain

And then he says, "The writer must be true to truth." And that's a killer, because the only way you can describe a human being truly is by describing his imperfections. The perfect human being is uninteresting - the Buddha who leaves the world, you know. It is the imperfections of life that are lovable. And when the writer sends a dart of the true word, it hurts. But it goes with love. This is what Mann called "erotic irony," the love for that which you are killing with your cruel, analytical word. — Joseph Campbell

Life may be cruel at certain moments; but we will always help us hand in hand. — Kristian Goldmund Aumann

Fate had a cruel sense of humor. It had been all his fault, anyway, whatever Mick or Gillia told him. Careless preoccupation and utter stupidity. Boyhood ignorance and negligence. He was only getting what he deserved, over and over again, for the rest of his life. If only in his dreams. — V.S. Carnes

I always thought death was cruel, a silent destroyer of breath, of hope, of life. Now I understand it is physical death, the perception of it, the fear of it, which often saves us; for death marks the end of our flesh causing us to question the future of what we are. — Stefanie Schneider

Atrocity is truly emperor; All things that thrive are slaves of cruel Creation. — John Updike

They were four desperate men, made hard by life, cruel by nature, and driven to desperation by imprisonment. — Louis L'Amour

For the vile human pigs in life; the sloppy, disheveled, uncaring dregs, the ungrateful, and especially for the vicious, negative emotional peasants - there will only continue to be the hard and painful lessons you so desperately need. The invisible hand will hold you in your wretched place until your last breath - unless you evolve. If you are cruel and ignorant the invisible fist will pound you into oblivion until you submit, humble yourself and soften your hard heart. — Bryant McGill

Gossip and slander are not victimless crimes. Words do not just dissipate into midair ... Words can injure and damage, maim and destroy - forcefully, painfully, lastingly ... Plans have been disrupted, deals have been lost, companies have fallen, because of idle gossip or malicious slander. Reputations have been sullied, careers have been ruined, lives have been devastated, because of cruel lies or vicious rumors ... Your words have such power to do good or evil that they must be chosen carefully, wisely, and well. — Wayne D. Dosick

Life was like that when you were fifteen and knobby-kneed and you only had a handful of choices. Your world was small and cruel and narrow-minded and breathtaking. — Colleen Curran

Each of us, desperately clutching his identity amid the impalatable onward pour of Time and Thought, finds only in art-and chiefly in written art- means to halt that ceaseless, cruel drift. — Christopher Morley

Perhaps down in his heart Okonkwo was not a cruel man. But his whole life was dominated by fear, the fear of failure and of weakness.
It was deeper and more intimate that the fear of evil and capricious gods and of magic, the fear of the forest, and of the forces of nature, malevolent, red in tooth and claw.
Okonkwo's fear was greater than these. It was not external but lay deep within himself. — Chinua Achebe

I don't think I shall ever find peace till I make up my mind about things,' he said gravely. He hesitated. 'It's very difficult to put into words. The moment you try you feel embarrassed. You say to yourself: "Who am I that I should bother myself about this, that, and the other? Perhaps it's only because I'm a conceited prig. Wouldn't it be better to follow the beaten track and let what's coming to you come?" And then you think of a fellow who an hour before was full of life and fun,and he's lying dead; it's all so cruel and meaningless. It's hard not to ask yourself what life is all about and whether there's any sense to it or whether it's all a tragic blunder of blind fate. — W. Somerset Maugham

I can't fuck up his whole life and take away everything that means something to him just because I think I've found my soul mate.' 'Yeah, but ... ' 'Yeah, but. I know. Having found my soul mate, how cruel is it for me to stay with Bob, pretending I feel more for him than I do and preventing him from going out and finding someone who loves him the way I love Mark?' 'You can't be responsible for other people's feelings, — Scarlett Thomas

Now that lilacs are in bloom
She has a bowl of lilacs in her room
And twists one in her fingers while she talks.
"Ah, my friend, you do not know, you do not know
What life is, you who hold it in your hands";
(slowly twisting the lilac stalks)
"You let it flow from you, you let it flow,
And youth is cruel, and has no remorse
And smiles at situations which it cannot see."
I smile, of course,
And go on drinking tea. — T. S. Eliot

But now I think he was trying to teach me to never feel entitled because life can be a cruel bitch at times. — S.A. Tawks

You reach a certain age when reality grabs you by the scruff of the neck and shouts in your face:"Hey, look, this is what life is." And you have to open your eyes and look at it, listen to it, smell it: people who don't like you, things you don't want to do, things that hurt, things that scare you, questions without answers, feelings you don't understand, feelings you don't want but have no control over.
Reality.
When you gradually come to realise that all that stuff in books, films, television, magazines, newspapers, comics - it's all rubbish. It's got nothing to do with anything. It's all made up. It doesn't happen like that. It's not real. It means nothing. Reality is what you see when you look out of the window of a bus: dour faces, sad and temporary lives, millions of cars, metal, bricks, glass, rain, cruel laughter, ugliness, dirt, bad teeth, crippled pigeons, little kids in pushchairs who've already forgotten how to smile ... — Kevin Brooks

I am not brutal or cruel to animals. My mission has always been to save dogs - especially troubled and abandoned dogs. I've dedicated my life to this. — Cesar Millan

The ignorant mass looks upon the man who makes a violent protest against our social and economic iniquities as upon a wild beast, a cruel, heartless monster, whose joy it is to destroy life and bathe in blood; or at best, as upon an irresponsible lunatic. Yet nothing is further from the truth. As a matter of fact, those who have studied the character and personality of these men, or who have come in close contact with them, are agreed that it is their super-sensitiveness to the wrong and injustice surrounding them which compels them to pay the toll of our social crimes. The most noted writers and poets, discussing the psychology of political offenders, have paid them the highest tribute. Could anyone assume that these men had advised violence, or even approved of the acts? Certainly not. Theirs was the attitude of the social student, of the man who knows that beyond every violent act there is a vital cause. — Emma Goldman

It's not just that life is cruel, but that in the very process of our birth we submit to life's cruelty — Shashi Deshpande

I am yet too young to understand that God is any respecter of persons. I believe that to have interfered as I have done ... in behalf of His despised poor, was not wrong, but right. Now, if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children, and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments, I submit: so let it be done! — John Brown

No, you listen! All my life, you've told me that the world is a dark, cruel place. But now I see that the only thing dark and cruel about it is people like you! — Salvatore Quasimodo

What's happened to my life? These ten-year chunks that are doled out to you in passports are a cruel form of memento mori. How many more new passports will I have? One (1965)? Two (1975)? Such a long way off, 1975, yet your passport life seems all too brief. How long did he live? He managed to renew six passports. — William Boyd

One of the most widely held beliefs in our culture today is that romantic love is all important in order to have a full life but that it almost never lasts. A second, related belief is that marriage should be based on romantic love. Taken together, these convictions lead to the conclusion that marriage and romance are essentially incompatible, that it is cruel to commit people to lifelong connection after the inevitable fading of romantic joy. The Biblical understanding of love does not preclude deep emotion. As we will see, a marriage devoid of passion and emotional desire for one another doesn't fulfill the Biblical vision. But neither does the Bible pit romantic love against the essence of love, which is sacrificial commitment to the good of the other. If we think of love primarily as emotional desire and not as active, committed service, we end up pitting duty and desire against each other in a way that is unrealistic and destructive. — Timothy Keller

Have you ever had a difference with a dear friend? How his letters, written in the period of love and confidence, sicken and rebuke you! What a dreary mourning it is to dwell upon those vehement protests of dead affection! What lying epitaphs they make over the corpse of love! What dark, cruel comments upon Life and Vanities! Most of us have got or written drawers full of them. They are closet-skeletons which we keep and shun — William Makepeace Thackeray

Is cruelty a moral judgment if it is fundamental to forms of life? Who is man to say that the workings of nature, and therefore of the divine plan of which he himself is part, are cruel? — Charles Lindbergh

Life is such an effort, Child. It's a war that is renewed each day, and its moments of joy are brief parentheses for which you pay a cruel price. — Oriana Fallaci

If the street life, not the Whitechapel street life, but that of the common but so-called respectable part of town is in any city more gloomy, more ugly, more grimy, more cruel than in London, I certainly don't care to see it. Sometimes it occurs to one that possibly all the failures of this generation, the world over, have been suddenly swept into London, for the streets are a restless, breathing, malodorous pageant of the seedy of all nations. — Willa Cather

For the crown of our life as it closes Is darkness, the fruit thereof dust; No thorns go as deep as a rose's, And love is more cruel than lust. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

They are the typical product of the structure of the German Lager: if one offers a position of privilege to a few individuals in a state of slavery, exacting in exchange the betrayal of a natural solidarity with their
comrades, there will certainly be someone who will accept. He will be withdrawn from the common law and will become untouchable; the more power that he is given, the more he will be consequently hateful and
hated. When he is given the command of a group of unfortunates, with the right of life or death over them, he will be cruel and tyrannical, because he will understand that if he is not sufficiently so, someone else, judged more suitable, will take over his post.
Moreover, his capacity for hatred, unfulfilled in the direction of the oppressors, will double back, beyond all reason, on the oppressed; and he will only be satisfied when he has unloaded onto his underlings the injury received from above. — Primo Levi

He was very fond of flying fish as they were his principal friends on the ocean. He was sorry for the birds, especially the small delicate dark terns that were always flying and looking and almost never finding, and he thought, the birds have a harder life than we do except for the robber birds and the heavy strong ones. Why did they make birds so delicate and fine as those sea swallows when the ocean can be so cruel? She is kind and very beautiful. But she can be so cruel and it comes so suddenly and such birds that fly, dipping and hunting, with their small sad voices are made too delicately for the sea. — Ernest Hemingway,

Hatred is about possession. It is all-consuming, cruel, and vainglorious. When love is allowed to fester, it becomes twisted and corrupt; it settles deep in the heart ... and metastasizes, sending its dark roots through the body to raze all that stands in its way. Love is chaste and pure. Love is banal ... No, hatred has infinitely more possibilities. — Nenia Campbell

You still waste time with those things, Lenu? We are flying over a ball of fire. The part that has cooled floats on the lava. On that part we construct the buildings, the bridges, and the streets, and every so often the lava comes out of Vesuvius or causes an earthquake that destroys everything. There are microbes everywhere that make us sick and die. There are wars. There is a poverty that makes us all cruel. Every second something might happen that will cause you such suffering that you'll never have enough tears. And what are you doing? A theology course in which you struggle to understand what the Holy Spirit is? Forget it, it was the Devil who invented the world, not the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Do you want to see the string of pearls that Stefano gave me? — Elena Ferrante

Miyata was fluent and intelligent. Nothing was beyond his curiosity. He seemed to be above the confusion of life, as if he had been commissioned to spend his own in undisturbed judgement of the world about him, protected always by a mandate from the gods. They spoke briefly of Korea and then of the past war with the United States. Miyata had been in Japan for its entire duration and must have been deeply affected, but when he talked about it, it was without bitterness. Wars were not of his doing. He considered them almost poetically, as if they were seasons, the cruel winters of man, even though almost all the work he had done in the 1930s and early 1940s had been lost when his house was burned in the great incendiary raid of 1944. He described the night vividly, the endless hours, the bombers thundering low over the storms of fire. — James Salter

was not death for which she grieved, but life, life which had carved his mouth into such sorrow and had set hollows underneath his eyes, which had given him dreams of love in his youth and then had robbed him, had given him dreams in his age of free islands in a blue and tropic sea and had held him locked in a drab house in a little town. And as cruel as anything was death, which revealed him like this, when he was helpless any longer to hide that which alive he had hidden. She went away crying most passionately to her heart, "We ought all to be free. Everybody ought to be free for himself, somehow. No one ought to come to death and never have known what freedom is." When — Pearl S. Buck

Was not merely weak but also evil to throw away your life when so many had their lives or the promise of their future taken from them by cruel people or by the brutal forces of nature. — Dean Koontz

A fool is a man who believes glory can be found at the tip of a sword instead of on the tip of his tongue. That is life's cruel trick. — Natalia Jaster

In my small way, I preserved and catalogued, and dipped into the vast ocean of learning that awaited, knowing all the time that the life of one man was insufficient for even the smallest part of the wonders that lay within. It is cruel that we are granted the desire to know, but denied the time to do so properly. We all die frustrated; it is the greatest lesson we have to learn. — Iain Pears

And that's why people read comics, to get away from the way life works, which is quite cruel and unheroic and ends in death. — Grant Morrison

It's a cruel fact of war that it takes little more than applying pressure to one finger to end another person's life. More than that, it's a cruel fact of life that we are hardwired to follow the crowd in a moment of panic. — Trevor D. Richardson

What I mean is, things like that happen. They may seem might cruel and unfair, but that's how life is a part of the time. But that isn't the only way life is. A part of the time, it's mighty good. And a man can't afford to waste all the good part, worrying about the bad parts. That makes it all bad — Fred Gipson