Quotes & Sayings About Cruel To Be Kind

You may have noticed that people in bus stations, if they know you also are alone, will glance at you sidelong, with a look that is both piercing and intimate, and if you let them sit beside you, they will tell you long lies about numerous children who are all gone now, and mothers who were beautiful and cruel, and in every case they will tell you that they were abandoned, disappointed, or betrayed--that they should not be alone, that only remarkable events, of the kind one reads in a book, could have made their condition so extreme. And that is why, even if the things they say are true, they have the quick eyes and active hands and the passion for meticulous elaboration of people who know they are lying. Because, once alone, it is impossible to believe that one could ever been otherwise. Loneliness is absolute discovery. — Marilynne Robinson

I coudn't be kind to him after what he'd done, couldn't be cruel after what I had done — Rosamund Hodge

It shouldn't be the consumer's responsibility to figure out what's cruel and what's kind, what's environmentally destructive and what's sustainable. Cruel and destructive food products should be illegal. We don't need the option of buying children's toys made with lead paint, or aerosols with chlorofluorocarbons, or medicines with unlabeled side effects. And we don't need the option of buying factory-farmed animals. — Jonathan Safran Foer

My heart had been touched by him, battered by him, cradled by him as the days passed. He was cruel without meaning to be yet he was kind, and I needed him too much to let myself want him — Mackenzie Herbert

You gotta be cruel to be kind. — William Shakespeare

When I went into the Army, I made up my mind that I was putting myself at the Army's disposal. I believe in the war. That doesn't mean I believe in the Army. I don't believe in any army. You don't expect justice out of an army, if you're a sensible, grown-up human being, you only expect victory. And if it comes to that, our Army is probably the most just one that ever existed ... I expected the Army to be corrupt, inefficient, cruel, wasteful, and it turned out to be all those things, just like all armies, only much less so than I thought before I got into it. It is much less corrupt, for example, than the German Army. Good for us. The victory we win will not be as good as it might be, if it were a different kind of army, but it will be the best kind of victory we can expect in this day and age, and I'm thankful for it. — Irwin Shaw

According to some Christian teachings, Jesus and God ascended above the sun, the moon and the stars leaving us to be slaughtered by Satan, and then told us to come and seek them, where it would never be possible for any human to reach. What kind of a God would be so cruel to His children? — Nicky Verster

This is the free enterprise system. The only place in the world that I can recall where companies never failed was the old Soviet Union. This is what investors do in the free enterprise and capitalism system. And, yes, the free enterprise system can be cruel. But the problem with this administration is that small businesses have been the ones that have suffered the most, the kind that need investors, the kind that don't need the hundreds of pages, the thousands of pages of regulations that continue to plague them and have them continue to hold back on hiring and investment. — John McCain

Enter Justine Putet, of whom it is now time to speak. Imagine a swarthy-looking, ill-tempered person, dried-up and of viperish disposition, with a bad complexion, an evil expression, a cruel tongue, defective internal economy, and (over all this) a layer of aggressive piety and loathsome suavity of speech. A paragon of virtue of a kind that filled you with dismay, for virtue in such a guise as this is detestable to behold, and in this instance it seemed to be inspired by a spirit of hatred and vengeance rather than by ordinary feelings of kindness. An energetic user of rosaries, a fervent petitioner at her prayers, but also an unbridled sower of calumny and clandestine panic. In a word, she was the scorpion of Clochemerle, but a scorpion disguised as a woman of genuine piety. — Gabriel Chevallier

It seems to me that we can't explain all the truly awful things in the world like war and murder and brain tumors, and we can't fix these things, so we look at the frightening things that are closer to us and we magnify them until they burst open. Inside is something that we can manage, something that isn't as awful as it had a first seemed. It is a relief to discover that although there might be axe murderers and kidnappers in the world, most people seem a lot like us: sometimes afraid and sometimes brave, sometimes cruel and sometimes kind. — Sharon Creech

Earth is a silly and boring planet. If not, then it is too deeply unpleasant to be allowed to exist! Dammit, there's something wrong with those people! They are beyond redemption and hope! They are not very bright, they are incredibly bigoted, and unbe-fucking-lievably cruel, both to their own kind and any other species that has the misfortune to stray within range, which of course these days means damn nearly every species; and they're slowly but determinedly fucking up the entire planet . . . — Iain M. Banks

Choosing to be kind rather than to be cruel benefits everyone. — Sharon Gannon

The Beautiful Mystery Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #8:
"Do you know why our emblem is two wolves intertwined?" Gamache shook his head.
..."One of the (native) elders told him that when he was a boy his grandfather came to him and told him he had two wolves fighting inside him. One was grey, the other black. The grey one wanted his grandfather to be courageous, and patient, and kind. The other, the black one, wanted his grandfather to be fearful and cruel. This upset the boy, and he thought about it for a few days and returned to his grandfather. He asked, 'Grandfather, which of the wolves will win?' Do you know what his grandfather said?" Gamache shook his head. There was such a look of sadness on the Chief Inspector's face, it almost broke the abbot's heart. "The one I feed. — Louise Penny

We all have that heritage, no matter what old land our fathers left. All colors and blends of Americans have somewhat the same tendencies. It's a breed - selected out by accident. And so we're overbrave and overfearful - we're kind and cruel as children. We're overfriendly and at the same time frightened of strangers. We boast and are impressed. We're oversentimental and realistic. We are mundane and materialistic - and do you know of any other nation that acts for ideals? We eat too much. We have no taste, no sense of proportion. We throw our energy about like waste. In the old lands they say of us that we go from barbarism to decadence without an intervening culture. Can it be that our critics have not the key or the language of our culture? — John Steinbeck

Some adventures begin easily. It is not hard, after all, to be sucked up by a tornado or pushed through a particularly porrous mirror; there is no skill involved in being swept away by a great wave or pulled down a rabbit hole. Some adventures require nothing more than a willing heart and the ability to trip over the cracks in the world.
Other adventures must be committed to before they have even properly begun. How else will they know the worthy from the unworthy, if they do not require a certain amount of effort on the part of the ones who would undertake them? Some adventures are cruel, because it is the only way they know to be kind. — Seanan McGuire

We're all God don't you see?
We're holy; we are good,
We were created on his own image,
We kill, rape and slaughter our birds,
We're all God can't you see?
We came to be from good and kind,
We slave others of our kind,
We mistreat our woman and rape our children,
We're all God can't you see?
We feed our animals, and then chop then into pieces,
We are all God and as God we kill and destroy as we please,
We are Good and kind, and we feed the poor
We rape Mother Nature, and desecrate the ocean
We slaughter one another in the name of Justice,
We condemn and judge, and we become a ruthless, and cruel,
We're all God can't you see?
We came from good and kind. — Quetzal

One of the most widespread superstitions is that every man has his own special, definite qualities; that a man is kind, cruel, wise, stupid, energetic, apathetic, etc. Men are not like that. We may say of a man that he is more often kind than cruel, oftener wise than stupid, oftener energetic than apathetic, or the reverse; but it would be false to say of one man that he is kind and wise, of another that he is wicked and foolish. And yet we always classify mankind in this way. And this is untrue. Men are like rivers: the water is the same in each, and alike in all; but every river is narrow here, is more rapid there, here slower, there broader, now clear, now cold, now dull, now warm. It is the same with men. Every man carries in himself the germs of every human quality, and sometimes one manifests itself, sometimes another, and the man often becomes unlike himself, while still remaining the same man, In some people these changes are very rapid, and Nekhludoff was such a man. — Leo Tolstoy

The holy prophets have not only refused to follow erroneous human trends, but have pointed out these errors. No wonder the response to the prophets has not always been one of indifference. So often the prophets have been rejected because they first rejected the wrong ways of their own society ...
Prophets have a way of jarring the carnal mind. Too often the holy prophets are wrongly perceived as harsh and as anxious to make a record in order to say, "I told you so." Those prophets I have known are the most loving of men. It is because of their love and integrity that they cannot modify the Lord's message merely to make people feel comfortable. They are too kind to be so cruel. I am so grateful that prophets do not crave popularity. — Spencer W. Kimball

It seemed that for every evil they defeated, worse took its place, but Vaughn banished the thought that this all might be a cruel game, a hoax played on the ... 'No! I know what true Goodness, true Life, true Love is. Besides, this is too miserable to be a game ... unless demons ... NO! Besides, even if I was some kind of pawn, well, then this game piece would rebel! — Darryl Steven Markowitz

Cruelty is easy, and it breeds only misery. Kindness is harder, and you have to be brave to give it. To be cruel, you can stay closed off from everyone, wear a mask, but to be kind, in essence, to show love, you have to make yourself vulnerable, show your true self to someone and open yourself up to rejection. — L. H. Cosway

What breaks my heart is suffering of any kind. Too often, our world is divisive and cruel where it needs to be uniting and loving. — Alicia Keys

There really were no chains like the ones in your head. — K.J. Charles

I'm afraid for you," he'd said. "The world can be cruel to your kind." But Jesper had always wondered if maybe his father had been a little afraid of him, too. — Leigh Bardugo

God has to be temporarily cruel in order to be permanently kind. — Meher Baba

Pleasure cannot be shared; like Pain, it can only be experienced or inflicted, and when we give Pleasure to our Lovers or bestow Charity upon the Needy, we do so, not to gratify the object of our Benevolence, but only ourselves. For the Truth is that we are kind for the same reason as we are cruel, in order that we may enhance the sense of our own Power ... — Aldous Huxley

It used to worry me what people said about me. I'm learning not to worry as much. Sometimes you feel critics are wrong all the time, but I don 't take objection to it, because that's the way it goes. They can be wrong, they can be right. They can be cruel, they can be kind. — Al Pacino

There's a lot of unnecessary meanness that happens while you're trying to sort out who you want to be, who your friends are, who your friends are not. Adults spend a lot of time talking about bullying in schools these days, but the real problem isn't as obvious as one kid throwing a Slurpee in another kid's face. It's about social isolation. It's about cruel jokes. It's about the way kids treat one another. I've seen it with my own eyes, how old friends can turn against each other: it seems, sometimes, that it's not enough for them to go their separate ways - they literally have to "ice" their old buddies out just to prove to the new friends that they're no longer still friends. That's the kind of stuff I don't find acceptable. Fine, don't be friends anymore: but stay kind about it. Be respectful. Is that too much to ask? — R.J. Palacio

One can't be kind to one person and cruel to another. — Morarji Desai

For some reasonthen, I remember how Sam hated to be laughed at, and all of the times I did it anyway, because I wanted him to feel stupid, and I wonder how anybody can be cruel to someone they love. How can anyone do anything but love each other and be kind when at the end of it all, waiting quietly, sure as the dark at the end of the loveliest day, is only this? — C.J. Flood

You can't expect to draw people into your life who are kind, confident, and generous if you're thinking and acting in cruel, weak, and selfish ways. You must be what it is that you're seeking- that is, you need to put forth what you want to attract. — Wayne Dyer

You are not angry when you don't get what you want, because your wanting it was simply a preference, not a necessity. You therefore have no fear associated with the possibility of not getting it. Hence, no anger. You are not angry when you see others doing what you don't want them to do, because you don't need them to do or not do any particular thing. Hence, no anger. You are not angry when someone is unkind, because you have no need for them to be kind. You have no anger when someone is unloving, because you have no need for them to love you. You have no anger when someone is cruel, or hurtful, or seeks to damage you, for you have no need for them to behave any other way, and you are clear that you cannot be damaged. You do not even have anger should someone seek to take your life, because you do not fear death. — Neale Donald Walsch

I was alone, chose to be and demanded it, for this building would complete my cycle of life. The years to this moment stretched long, yet seemed short, sometimes cruel or kind, but never the way I wanted. This house would be me. — Marie F. Martin

Madoka: Won't anyone notice that Mami-san is dead?
Homura: Mami Tomoe's only relatives are distant relations. It will be quite some time before anyone files a missing persons report. When one dies on that side of the wards, not even a body is left behind. She'll wind up forever a "missing person" ... That is what happens to magical girls in the end.
Madoka: ... That's too cruel! Mami-san has been fighting all alone for a long time for everyone's sake! For no one to even notice that she's gone ... That's just too lonely a fate ...
Homura: It is just that kind of contract that gives us the power in the first place. It isn't for anyone else's sake. We fight on for the sake of our own prayer. So for no one to notice ... for the world to forget us ... That is just something we have to accept. — Magica Quartet

Lee went on, That's why I include myself. We all have that heritage, no matter what old land our fathers left. All colors and blends of Americans have somewhat the same tendencies. It's a breed - selected out by accident. And so we're overbrave and overfearful - we're kind and cruel as children. We're overfriendly and at the same time frightened of strangers. We boast and are impressed. We're oversentimental and realistic. We are mundane and materialistic - and do you know of any other nation that acts for ideals? We eat too much. We have no taste, no sense of proportion. We throw our energy about like waste. In the old lands they say of us that we go from barbarism to decadence without an intervening culture. Can it be that our critics have not the key or the language of our culture? That's what we are, Cal - all of us. You aren't very different. — John Steinbeck

Cruel to be kind means that I love you. — Nick Lowe

Maybe I was what Leah thought she was. Some kind of dead end that shouldn't be passed on to another generation. Or maybe it was just that my life was a big, cruel joke, and there was no escape from the punch line. -Jacob — Stephenie Meyer

to shower. We'll see what kind of time I have left after that." "I can clean up, don't worry about it," Mitch said. "I got some sleep." "I need to be doing something now that I'm up," Angela said. After they tidied up, Angela retreated to bed for a while, saving a shower for later. She found sleep easily enough again, but it was still of the haunted variety. Some dreams were like her earlier ones, cruel but not revolting. Others were flat out nightmares. Walking hand-in-hand with him in the park only to have him vanish from right beside her. — C.M. Newman

One, no matter how much they love you - or don't love you - has the power to change you, Elise. That's all you. You choose to be happy or bitter or cruel or kind. — J.D. Robb

The camera can be lenient; it is can also expert at being cruel. But its cruelty only produces another kind of beauty, according to the surrealist preferences which rule photographic taste. — Susan Sontag

I must be cruel only to be kind — William Shakespeare

Our love is true because the truth is love isn't always kind or patient, sometimes it's raw and passionate and impulsive and can even be cruel. Believe it or not sometimes you have to work at it and when we we're good; we're not even great we're phenomenal. Sometimes I'm temperamental asshole and you're just a crazy grade A bitch! But we work for God's sake so don't throw us away! We are just two imperfect people living in an imperfect world with a slightly imperfect love, is there anything more perfect than that? I love you Sienna, I love you now and I will always love you." He said so sincerely with a look so pure it startled her and set all the nerves in her body alight with an exhilarating intense fire that she tried to extinguish immediately with pails of water. — Ali Harper

As Hamlet, the Prince of Denmark, had said in Shakespeare's immortal words, 'I must be cruel only to be kind. — Pranab Mukherjee

If you really want to know someone, you must see their emotions off guard. That's how I know Joan Crawford could never have been cruel to her children. I really knew her, when she was still Billie, as she liked to be called in the early days. In a relationship as close as ours, I had the chance to see her in every kind of personal situation. — Douglas Fairbanks Jr.

I've always kind of made sure to maintain the sense of who I am and never be mean or cruel or snotty to anyone. Because, at the end of the day, it's not going to help you last in the business, and who wants to be around someone like that? I don't want to turn into 'that guy.' That guy! — Leonardo DiCaprio

Levana's heart throbbed. "It's been almost ten years."
"I know."
"And now? Are you still waiting for it to be over?"
His expression softened. The anger was gone, replaced with something infuriatingly kind, though his words were heartbreakingly cruel. "Are you still waiting for me to fall in love with you? — Marissa Meyer

One of the elders told him that when he was a boy his grandfather came to him one day and said he had two wolves fighting inside him. One was gray, the other black. The gray one wanted his grandfather to be courageous, and patient, and kind. The other, the black one, wanted his grandfather to be fearful and cruel. This upset the boy, and he thought about it for a few days then returned to his grandfather. He asked, 'Grandfather, which of the wolves will win?'
The abbot smiled slightly and examined the Chief Inspector. 'Do you know what his grandfather said?'
Gamache shook his head ...
'The one I feed,' said Dom Philippe. — Louise Penny

Was he again
I had never forgotten that overheard phrase of Eve's
being kind to be cruel? I only knew I had been given back enough to live on. And dimly, dimly, I began to see a new Last Act to crown my play. — Dodie Smith

But Peter had seen too much, knew too well that men-kind didn't need an excuse to be cruel and murder one another. — Brom

In this world, some time ago, far past anyone's remembering,women as a kind had done something so terrible, so awful, so fantastically cruel that they and their daughters and their daughters' daughters were forever beyond forgiveness until the end of time- unforgiving, distrusted, enslaved, made to suffer for the least offenses committed against any man. What was remembered were the terms of our survival as a class: We were to be docile, beautiful,uncomplaining, pure, and failing that at the least useful.bin return we might be allowed something like a long life. But if we were not any of these things, but a man's reckoning, or if perchance we violated their sense of that pact, we would have no protection whatsoever and were to be treated worse than any wild dog or lame horse. — Alexander Chee

They just sat there looking back at me. The orange queen was clacking her typewriter. Cop talk was no more treat for her than legs to a dance director. They had the calm weathered faces of healthy men in hard condition. They had the eyes they always have, cloudy and grey like freezing water. The firm set mouth, the hard little wrinkles at the corners of the eyes, the hard hollow meaningless stare, not quite cruel and a thousand miles from kind. The dull ready-made clothes, worn without style, with a sort of contempt; the look of men who are poor and yet proud of their power, watching always for ways to make it felt, to shove it into you and twist it and grin and watch you squirm, ruthless without malice, cruel and yet not always unkind. What would you expect them to be? Civilization had no meaning for them. All they saw of it was the failures, the dirt, the dregs, the aberrations and the disgust. — Raymond Chandler

I want you to give them back, Flambeau, and I want you to give up this life. There is still youth and honour and humour in you; don't fancy they will last in that trade. Men may keep a sort of level of good, but no man has ever been able to keep on one level of evil. That road goes down and down. The kind man drinks and turns cruel; the frank man kills and lies about it. Many a man I've known started like you to be an honest outlaw, a merry robber of the rich, and ended stamped into slime. Maurice Blum started out as an anarchist of principle, a father of the poor; he ended a greasy spy and tale-bearer that both sides used and despised. Harry Burke started his free money movement sincerely enough; now he's sponging on a half-starved sister for endless brandies and sodas. Lord — G.K. Chesterton

If there be a fate that is sometimes cruel to me, there surely is a kind and merciful Providence which watches over me. — Edgar Rice Burroughs

Dust is not a constant. There's not a fixed quantity that has always been the same. Conscious beings make Dust - they renew it all the time, by thinking and feeling and reflecting, by gaining wisdom and passing it on. And if you help everyone else in your worlds to do that, by helping them to learn and understand about themselves and each other and the way everything works, and by showing them how to be kind instead of cruel, and patient instead of hasty, and cheerful instead of surly, and above all how to keep their minds open and free and curious ... Then they will renew enough to replace what is lost through one window. So there could be one left open. — Philip Pullman

Stories don't teach us to be good; it isn't as simple as that. They show us what it feels like to be good, or to be bad. They show us people like ourselves doing right things and wrong things, acting bravely or acting meanly, being cruel or being kind, and they leave it up to our own powers of empathy and imagination to make the connection with our own lives. Sometimes we do, sometimes we don't. It isn't like putting a coin in a machine and getting a chocolate bar; we're not mechanical, we don't respond every time in the same way ...
The moral teaching comes gently, and quietly, and little by little, and weighs nothing at all. We hardly know it's happening. But in this silent and discreet way, with every book we read and love, with every story that makes its way into our heart, we gradually acquire models of behaviour and friends we admire and patterns of decency and kindness to follow.
Philip Pullman from his Award Lecture, Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award Recipient 2005 — Philip Pullman

Clara Oswald: This is just a dream, but very clever people can hear dreams. So please, just listen. I know you're afraid, but being afraid is all right, because didn't anybody ever tell you fear is a superpower? Fear can make you faster and cleverer and stronger.
And one day, you'll come back to this barn and on that day you're going to be very afraid indeed. But that's ok because if you're very wise and very strong, fear doesn't have to make you cruel or cowardly. Fear can make you kind.
It doesn't matter if there's nothing under the bed or in the dark, so long as you know it's ok to be afraid of it. You're always going to be afraid, even if you learn to hide it. Fear is like a companion, a constant companion, always there. But that's ok, because fear can bring us together.
Fear can bring you home.
I'm going to leave you with something just so you always remember: Fear makes companions of us all. -Listen, Doctor Who, episode 8.4 — Steven Moffat

Life is as precious to us as it is for an animal. An animal is as loving, caring, and kind to her children as we are. She might not be able to tell us but she can express it through her eyes and expressions. She feels joy and happiness. She is helpless in our cruel hands and vulnerable to our vicious greed. Let us be kind to animals. Let us learn to feel their pain. Can we kill a helpless baby to feed our greed? Then how can we kill helpless animal friends that can't talk? Often we kill just for fun. How funny would it be if an animal killed a human just for fun? Let us be kind to animals as much as possible. I know we can. It is easier to love an animal than a human being. If you love an animal, it will rarely hurt you. Let us practice kindness and compassion to animals so that we may create a peaceful world. — Debasish Mridha

Peter had seen too much, knew too well that men-kind didn't need an excuse to be cruel and murder one another. If it wasn't drugs, then there was always something else. — Brom

You can be good for the mere sake of goodness; you cannot be bad for the mere sake of badness. You can do a kind action when you are not feeling kind and when it gives you no pleasure, simply because kindness is right; but no one ever did a cruel action simply because cruelty is wrong - only because cruelty is pleasant or useful to him, In other words, badness cannot succeed even in being bad in the same way in which goodness is good. Goodness is, so to speak, itself: badness is only spoiled goodness. And there must be something good first before it can be spoiled. — C.S. Lewis

By choosing to be kind instead of cruel, we can break the karmic chain of reacting to violence with more violence, contributing to a more peaceful future for everyone. — Sharon Gannon

Let's say there was no terrorism whatsoever and we were all very nice to one another and we were all kind, we still would be faced with an extremely cruel and hostile universe and existence and so I'm a great pessimist and I feel that it's impossible really to be happy, and that the best you can hope for is to be distracted. — Woody Allen

We must of necessity be servant to someone, either to God or to sin. The man who surrenders to Christ exchanges a cruel slave driver for a kind and gentle master whose yoke is easy and whose burden is light. — Aiden Wilson Tozer

How much more courage it took to be kind than to be cruel. — Louise Penny

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

It happens to many like that," he said. "I have seen them. But you have to show them so much injustice first ... Nobody wants to believe that the world is cruel - or that one's own kind are cruel. Not to know cruelty is to remain innocent, eh? And we should all like to remain innocent. A revolutionist is a man who, perhaps, fails to keep his innocence but so desperately wants it back that he seeks to create a world where all shall be innocent in that way. — Michael Moorcock

Sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind. — Colette McBeth

I bear my witness that the worst days I have ever had have turned out to be my best days. And when God has seemed most cruel to me he has then been most kind. If there is anything in this world for which I would bless him more than for anything else it is for pain and affliction. I am sure that in these things the richest tenderest love has been manifested to me. Our Father's wagons rumble most heavily when they are bringing us the richest freight of the bullion of his grace. Love letters from heaven are often sent in black-edged envelopes. The cloud that is black with horror is big with mercy. Fear not the storm. It brings healing in its wings and when Jesus is with you in the vessel the tempest only hastens the ship to its desired haven. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

She's the kind of person you want to like you. You know she can be cruel; you've seen her be cruel. But when her eyes are on you, and she's paying attention to you, you want it to last. Her beauty is part of it, but there's something more
something that draws you in. I think it's her transparency
everything she thinks or feels is written all over her face, and even if it wasn't, she'd say it anyway, because she says what she thinks, without thinking first. — Jenny Han

A man who writes a story is forced to put into it the best of his knowledge and the best of his feeling. The discipline of the written word punishes stupidity and dishonesty. A writer lives in awe of words for they can be cruel or kind, and they can change their meanings right in front of you. — John Steinbeck

Satire is an art best practiced behind the back of the intended target. I think inviting politicians on a satirical show becomes a very big trap. Because one of two things happen: Either you have to kind of unsharpen your fangs because you can't be quite as cruel to people to their face as you are behind their backs ... Or you don't defang, and those guests get the word and they stop coming. — Harry Shearer

It is the other way round: food cannot make you spiritual, but if you are spiritual your food habits will change. Eating anything will not make much difference. You can be a vegetarian and cruel to the extreme, and violent; you can be a non-vegetarian and kind and loving. Food will not make much difference. In India there are communities who have lived totally with vegetarian food; many Brahmins have lived totally with vegetarian food. They are non-violent but they are not spiritual. — Rajneesh

He was sensitive, so he had to be kind. I think of it whenever I see a young woman fawning all over a nerdy guy, some comedian or actor, thinking he couldn't ever be cruel because he's funny and he wears glasses. He's not conventionally hot, so he's not full of himself, so he'll be a good boyfriend, right?...Guys like that always seem to think they're Duckie from Pretty in Pink when they're actually Steff. — Mara Wilson

You teach me now how cruel you've been - cruel and false. Why did you despise me? Why did you betray your own heart, Cathy? I have not one word of comfort. You deserve this. You have killed yourself. Yes, you may kiss me, and cry; and wring out my kisses and tears: they'll blight you - they'll damn you. You loved me - what right had you to leave me? What right - answer me - for the poor fancy you felt for Linton? Because misery, and degradation, and death, and nothing that God or Satan could inflict would have parted us, you, of your own will did it. I have no broken your heart - you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine. So much the worse for me that I am strong. Do I want to live? What kind of living will it be when you - Oh, God! would you like to lie with your soul in the grave? — Emily Bronte

Nature is not cruel, only pitilessly indifferent. This is one of the hardest lessons for humans to learn. We cannot admit that things might be neither good nor evil, neither cruel nor kind, but simply callous-indifferent to all suffering, lacking all purpose. — Richard Dawkins

Crowds have one expression, cruel and fixed. You let yourself be trapped by a look. You let yourself be carried off and shut away in a place of silence. There your eyes may be ripped out, your tongue cut off, and your fingers hammered until the little bones splinter. The walls are splashed with thick clots of blood. Words are the worst kind of dog, they drag us along despite ourselves to somewhere we didn't want to go, they obsess us, they don't let us have a moment's rest, a moment's rest.

But before that? Before that is another place altogether. Memory blanks things out methodically. It has several floors, sealed off from one another and there is no passage joining them. One of them is hell. When you fall in, at the very instant you lose your footing, you forget everything, even what light is like. But once you are back in the world you retain only a faint memory of being shut up. It resonates like the dull echo of pain. — Marie Desplechin

Gamache nodded. It was what made his job so fascinating, and so difficult. How the same person could be both kind and cruel, compassionate and wretched. Unraveling a murder was more about getting to know the people than the evidence. People who were contrary and contradictory, and who often didn't even know themselves. — Louise Penny

It is much easier to be kind than cruel. — Debasish Mridha

And so we're overbrave and overfearful - we're kind and cruel as children. We're overfriendly and at the same time frightened of strangers. We boast and are impressed. We're oversentimental and realistic. We are mundane and materialistic - and do you know of any other nation that acts for ideals? We eat too much. We have no taste, no sense of proportion. We throw our energy about like waste. In the old lands they say of us that we go from barbarism to decadence without an intervening culture. Can it be that our critics have not the key or the language of our culture? That's what we are, Cal - all of us. — John Steinbeck

When you're a little kid, you think people are just one thing; but then you get older, and you realize it's not that simple. Chris wasn't that simple. He was cruel and he was kind. And he didn't like realizing that. It bothered him, that he wasn't just one thing. It made him feel fragile. Like he could break into pieces any time, because he didn't know how to hold himself together. That was why he did that with those other girls, went with them and kept it secret: so he could try out being different things and see how it felt, and he'd be safe. He could be as lovely as he wanted or as horrible as he wanted, and it wouldn't count, because no one else would ever know. — Tana French

She knew that kindness kills. All her life she'd suspected this and so she'd only ever been cold and cruel. She'd faced kindness with cutting remarks. She'd curled her lips at smiling faces. She'd twisted every thoughtful, considerate act into an assault. Everyone who was nice to her, who was compassionate and loving, she rebuffed.
Because she'd loved them. Loved them with all her heart, and wouldn't see them hurt. Because she'd known all her life that the surest way to hurt someone, to maim and cripple them, was to be kind. If people were exposed, they die. Best to teach them to be armored, even if it meant she herself was forever alone. Sealed off from human touch. — Louise Penny

One of the commonest and most generally accepted delusions is that every man can be qualified in some particular way
said to be kind, wicked, stupid, energetic, apathetic, and so on. People are not like that. We may say of a man that he is more often kind than cruel, more often wise than stupid, more often energetic than apathetic or vice versa; but it could never be true to say of one man that he is kind or wise, and of another that he is wicked or stupid. Yet we are always classifying mankind in this way. And it is wrong. Human beings are like rivers; the water is one and the same in all of them but every river is narrow in some places, flows swifter in others; here it is broad, there still, or clear, or cold, or muddy or warm. It is the same with men. Every man bears within him the germs of every human quality, and now manifests one, now another, and frequently is quite unlike himself, while still remaining the same man. — Leo Tolstoy

But as we are looking toward our future, I'm not sure it matters what we want to be but rather who we want to be. Someone honest or deceitful? Someone kind or cruel? Someone loyal or unfaithful? In any profession we can elect to be any of those things. I think this assignment is not only about what we choose to do but about who we choose to be. I choose to always be loyal to myself. — Ellen Schreiber

I need Thee, O Lord, for a curb on my tongue; when I am tempted to making carping criticisms and cruel judgements, keep me from speaking barbed words that hurt, and in which I find perverted satisfaction. Keep me from unkind words and from unkind silences. Restrain my judgements. Make my criticisms kind, generous, and constructive. Make me sweet inside, that I may be gentle with other people, gentle in the things I say, kind in what I do. Create in me that warmth of mercy that shall enable others to find Thy strength for their weakness, Thy peace for their strife, Thy joy for their sorrow, Thy love for their hatred, Thy compassion for their weakness. In thine own strong name, I pray. Amen. — Peter Marshall

So what if you're right? So what if you're wrong?
In the end you might be surprised to find that God doesn't care so much about whether you were right or wrong but whether, despite it all, you were kind or cruel. — Richelle E. Goodrich

If," we say readily, "God is holy and omnipotent, He would interfere and stop all this kind of thing"
meaning by "this kind of thing" wars, persecutions, cruelty, Hitlerism, Bolshevism, or whatever large issue happens to be distressing our minds at the time. But let us be quite sure that we have really considered the problem in all its aspects.
"Why doesn't God smite this dictator dead?" is a question a little remote from us. Why, madam, did He not strike you dumb and imbecile before you uttered that baseless and unkind slander the day before yesterday? Or me, before I behaved with such cruel lack of consideration to that well-meaning friend? And why, sir, did He not cause your hand to rot off at the wrist before you signed your name to that dirty little bit of financial trickery? — Dorothy L. Sayers

A great deal; you are good to those who are good to you. It is all I ever desire to be. If people were always kind and obedient to those who are cruel and unjust, the wicked people would have it all their own way; they would never feel afraid, and so they would never alter, but would grow worse and worse. When we are struck at without a reason, we should strike back again very hard; I am sure we should - so hard as to teach the person who struck us never to do it again. — Charlotte Bronte

It's just easier to make fun and cut down. It's kind of a way of life in America. If you can make people want to hear what you're going to say, it can be cruel and funny. — David Spade

Life does not require us to be consistent, cruel, patient, helpful, angry, rational, thoughtless, loving, rash, open-minded, neurotic, careful, rigid, tolerant, wasteful, rich, downtrodden, gentle, sick, considerate, funny, stupid, healthy, greedy, beautiful, lazy, responsive, foolish, sharing, pressured, intimate, hedonistic, industrious, manipulative, insightful, capricious, wise, selfish, kind or sacrificed. Life does, however, require us to live with the consequences of our choices. — Richard Bach

There would be no one there to live for her during those coming years; she would live for herself. There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistance with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature. A kind intention or a cruel intention made the act seem no less a crime as she looked upon it in that brief moment of illumination. — Kate Chopin

The first kill would be the hardest, but the next would be easier, and the one after that easier still, because it's true: Even the most sensitive person can get used to even the most insensitive thing.
Cruelty isn't a personality trait. Cruelty is a habit.
He pushed that thought away. To call what he was doing cruel implied he had a choice. Choosing between your kind and another species wasn't cruel. It was necessary. Not easy, especially when you've lived the last four years of your life pretending to be no different from them, but necessary. — Rick Yancey

You never can tell when you send a word, Like an arrow shot from a bow By an archer blind, be it cruel or kind, Just where it may chance to go! — Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Happiness comes from righteous living and the development of a noble character. You can observe this by noticing that people who are truly happy are honest, unselfish, kind, responsible and have a high moral standards. On the other hand, unhappy people are invariably selfish, lazy, irresponsible and lacking of self discipline. And people who are miserable tend to be immoral, dishonest, greedy, cruel, or in other ways dark in character. — Helen B. Andelin

Pedersen was always wooing her. Sometimes he was gracious and kind, but at other times when his failure wearied him he would be cruel and sardonic, with a suggestive tongue whose vice would have scourged her were it not that Marie was impervious, or too deeply inured to mind it. She always grinned at him and fobbed him off with pleasantries, whether he was amorous or acrid.
'God Almighty,' he would groan, 'she is not good for me, this Marie. What can I do for her? She is burning me alive and the Skaggerack could not quench me, not all of it. The devil! What can I do with this? Some day I shall smash her across the eyes, yes, across the eyes.'
So you see the man really loved her.
("The Tiger") — A.E. Coppard