Cruelest Quotes & Sayings

Philippians 2:3-8 tells us to humble ourselves by imitating Christ. Even though He is God, He was willing to add humanity to His deity. Becoming a human being was degrading to the second Person of the Godhead beyond words to describe it. In His humanity the omnipotent God became tired. The omniscient God grew in wisdom. The omnipresent God was circumscribed in a localized body. The sovereign God willingly submitted Himself to do the Father's will. The eternal God died in the cruelest manner imaginable. The holy Go was made sin for us. — Randy Jaeggli

The cruelest thing, hope, the way it strings you along, the way it makes you believe. — Jackson Pearce

People can be cruelest to those they love. — Veronica Rossi

Of all the well-meant emotions pity is the cruelest to share. — Joan Slonczewski

Because believing you're not alone is the cruelest trick of all. — Morgan Matson

Is Hollywood the cruelest city in the world? Well, it can be. New York can be that, too. You can be a Broadway star here one night, and something happens, and out
nobody knows you on the street. They forget you ever lived. It happens in Hollywood, too. — Buster Keaton

I remember wanting to laugh, but I held it in. I guess even then I thought laughing at someone's dream was one of the cruelest things one person could do to another. — Chris Colfer

Every death even the cruelest death
drowns in the total indifference of Nature
Nature herself would watch unmoved
if we destroyed the entire human race
I hate Nature
this passionless spectator this unbreakable iceberg-face
that can bear everything
this goads us to greater and greater acts — Peter Weiss

Reality has a way of bursting the bubble of illusion, and an affair is one of the biggest illusions that anyone can experience in life. It's based almost entirely on emotions with almost no logic to support it.

That fact becomes clear when children, employers, clergy, family, and friends all hear about the affair. Because they are not in the fog, they see the affair for what it really is: the cruelest, most devastating, and selfish act anyone can ever inflict on a spouse. With so many people seeing the situation logically and not emotionally, the unfaithful spouse has an opportunity to be advised and influenced by these people. Furthermore, the betrayed spouse gains support when he or she needs it the most. — Willard F. Harley Jr.

I was angry with him before. I'm not really sure why. Maybe I was just angry that the world had become such a complicated place, that I have never known even a fraction of the truth about it. Or that I allowed myself to grieve for someone who was never really gone, the same way I grieved for my mother all the years I thought she was dead. Tricking someone into grief is one of the cruelest tricks a person can play, and it's been played on me twice. — Veronica Roth

We all have a right to know, and if the government has been suppressing information about other life forms, that's the cruelest hoax of all. — Dwight Schultz

The cruelest aspect of love ... is its inviolable integrity. — Rick Yancey

Mankind in the aggregate I have found to be brutish, ignorant and unkind, whether those qualities were covered by the coarse tunic of the peasant of the white and purple toga of a senator. And yet in the weakest of men, in moments when they are alone and themselves, I have found veins of strength like gold in decaying rock; in the cruelest of men, flashes of tenderness and compassion; and in the vainest of men, moments of simplicity and grace. — John Edward Williams

War cannot be used as a means to prevent or abolish wars ... The idea of a war to prevent war is one of its oldest, and cruelest, tricks. — Barbara Ehrenreich

I'm a sadist at heart, and I have learned that one of the cruelest things you can do to someone is to teach them something, and thereby cause them to question their ignorance and long-held beliefs. — Peter Masters

He knew that the cruelest of blows too often came with a smile. — Tess Gerritsen

February is the cruelest month in western Oregon. — Judy Nedry

The pain is always bringing me a lesson. If I listen to the lesson when the pain is manageable, the pain won't get gargantuan and flatten me entirely, because I will have received the message at the center. I receive it as gently as I can, because the cruelest thing that I do to myself is try to push myself through an experience. — Bellamy Young

The cruelest lies are often told without a word
The kindest truths are often spoken, never heard — Ben Folds

If I catch you, I might do anything. I might strip the skin from your bones as I drain you dry. Or I might drag you into my chambers and have you pleasure me in ways you cannot even imagine. I might even take mercy on you, and that would be the cruelest injustice of all, because for you, it would only be a temporary reprieve. — Nenia Campbell

One of the cruelest judgments sustained against me is that I have spoken out as a recovered alcoholic to stimulate my acting career. — Mercedes McCambridge

Lying about anything is the cruelest thing in the world you could ever do. Be who you are. Don't try to be someone you're not. It never works. — Summer Glau

ALS is, in my opinion, the cruelest disease. At least with cancer, there's a glimmer of hope. You can come up with a game plan and you can fight. ALS is terminal. In all cases. Nobody has ever beaten ALS. I don't say this to be callous or melodramatic; indeed, I saw its effects up close. Worst of all, it affects only the body, so as people become progressively and inevitably more paralyzed, they are keenly aware of everything that is happening to them. Think about that: You are 100 percent aware of your own paralysis. The — Bryan Bishop

Only the cruelest hunters set their traps with terror and trepidation. — Nenia Campbell

Oh my dear, idealists are the cruelest monsters of them all. — Sarah Vowell

Of all the bright cruel lies they tell you, the cruelest is the one called love. — George R R Martin

Sometimes people don't get sick from bacteria or a virus- -living organisms alien to the human body- -but from the human brain itself. Our brains can be our worst enemy, our cruelest opponent. — Buket Uzuner

The cruelest thing that has happened to Lincoln since being shot by Booth was to have fallen into the hands of Carl Sandburg. — Edmund Wilson

The cruelest thing a man can do to a woman is to portray her as perfection. — D.H. Lawrence

I think being a mother is the cruelest thing in the world. — Nella Larsen

To fall in love with someone who does not love you back, is the cruelest, most unforgiving heartache I have ever experienced. — KB

It is a fact of big cities that one girl's darkest how is always another's moment of shining triumph, and New York is the biggest and cruelest city of them all. — Anna Godbersen

Beware young brides: The cruelest behaviors on earth are done in the name of, what some call, 'love.' Therefore, the Shulamite does a much better job at defining love than pop-culture.
pg 4 — Michael Ben Zehabe

[ ... ] even in the cruelest human being there can exist a flower of good. Maybe just the tiniest blossom, in need of water and sunlight, but a flower just the same. — Meg Cabot

I like to hurt people too. I can make the cruelest choice. The difference is, sometimes I don't, and you always do, and that makes you evil. — Veronica Roth

The elementary school years can also be a source of shame. Children can be terribly cruel. Any gay or lesbian child is especially vulnerable to ridicule. A child with developmental deficits, deformities or who is overweight is also an easy target. Children will shame other children the way they've been shamed. And if a child is being shamed at home, he will want to pass the hot potato by shaming others. Children like to tease. And teasing is a major source of shaming. Teasing is often done by shame-based parents, who transfer their shame by teasing their children. Older siblings can deliver some of the cruelest teasing of all. I have been horrified listening to clients' accounts of being teased by older siblings. — John Bradshaw

A shade of sorrow passed over Taliesin's face. 'There are those,' he said gently, 'who must first learn loss, despair, and grief. Of all paths to wisdom, this is the cruelest and longest. Are you one who must follow such a way? This even I cannot know. If you are, take heart nonetheless. Those who reach the end do more than gain wisdom. As rough wool becomes cloth, and crude clay a vessel, so do they change and fashion wisdom for others, and what they give back is greater than what they won. — Lloyd Alexander

The cruelest countries have the most laws. — Marty Rubin

I get frightened myself when I think of close friends who are now at the mercy of the cruelest monsters ever to stalk the earth. And all because they're Jews. — Anne Frank

We can be cruelest to those who remind us of ourselves." "Ty — Cassandra Clare

I feel wicked sleeping in a warm bed, while my dearest friends have been knocked down or have fallen into a gutter somewhere out in the cold night. I get frightened when I think of close friends who have now been delivered into the hands of the cruelest brutes that walk the earth. And all because they are Jews! — Anne Frank

April is the cruelest month, breeding
lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
memory and desire, stirring
dull roots with spring rain. — T. S. Eliot

The cruelest thing you can do to an artist is tell them their work is flawless when it isn't — Yahtzee Croshaw

The grossest, the cruelest, the most selfish, the most easily pervertible and perverted thing in this world, is government. — Henry Ward Beecher

Incidentally, I spent some time on the Purell website, where you can find a list of ninety-nine places germs lurk (in-flight magazines, movie tickets, gas-pump keypads, hotel room a/c controls, and on and on). It's hilarious and terrifying. The only place they don't mention is the Purell dispensers themselves. You know they're coated with germs. It's one of health's cruelest catch-22s. — A. J. Jacobs

Sometimes family was the cruelest form of love there was, for no one could hurt you more than the people who created you. — S.C. Stephens

The art of angling, the cruelest, the coldest and the stupidest of pretended sports. — Lord Byron

It's weird like, you can see the cruelest part of the world. The cruelest part. But then on the other side you see the most beautiful part, do you know? And it's like you go from one extreme to the next and they're both worth it, because you wouldn't see one without the other. But that cruel part, is damn cruel and you'll never forget it. But that heaven ... is heaven. — Britney Spears

The cruelest foe is a masked benefactor. The wars which make history so dreary have served the cause of truth and virtue. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Hope can be the cruelest thing. But it was all she had. — Robert Dunbar

But you raised a ruckus about and threatened to perform a Julius Caesarian on anybody on anybody who calls April the cruelest month- I was Damn born out of the loins of my father in the spring of April, you claimed. Surgeon, you stood up for the month of buds and bitches like a true Kuon Kunos — Aporva Kala

The cruelest thing anyone can do to Portnoy's Complaint is to read it twice. — Irving Howe

Life can be at its cruelest with love and dreams. But of course they keep most of us going. — Robert Black

Two of the cruelest, most primitive punishments our town deals out to those who fall from favor are the empty mailbox and the silent telephone. — Hedda Hopper

The citizens of Buffalo, then a smallish lakeside town, embarked on a brief campaign, led by a local judge named Wilkeson, to clear their own eponymous riverway and so tempt the canal engineers to route the Erie Canal to a terminus nearby. Energetic lobbying, together with the clearance of the creek, evidently worked, for the engineers did eventually end their labors there, and the fact that more than a million people now still brave one of the country's cruelest climates (with roof-topping lake-effect snowfalls drowning the city each winter) to live in and around Buffalo is testimony to the wisdom of Judge Wilkeson and the city fathers of 1825 in doing all the persuading, as well as dredging and prettifying the banks of Buffalo Creek. — Simon Winchester

Any chance we can bypass the cruelest method of death and settle this over a game of cards? — Jennifer A. Nielsen

Honesty is the cruelest game of all, because not only can you hurt someone - and hurt them to the bone - you can feel self-righteous about it at the same time. — Dave Van Ronk

Ah, cruel 'tis to love, And cruel not to love, But cruelest of all To love and love in vain. — Anacreon

Laughing at someone's dream was one of the cruelest things a person can do to another. — Chris Colfer

There are those of us who believe that under certain conditions the cruelest thing you can do to people you love is to force them to live. There are those of us who define living not by whether the heart beats and the lungs lift but whether the spirit is there, whether the music box plays. — Anna Quindlen

The lieutenant-colonel realized for the first time what most people never realize about themselves
that he was not only a victim of outrageous fortune, but one of outrageous fortune's cruelest agents as well. — Kurt Vonnegut

The religion which treats its flock as a credulous plaything offers one of the cruelest spectacles that can be imagined: a human being in fear and doubt who is openly exploited to believe in the impossible — Christopher Hitchens

Man is the cruelest animal," says Zarathustra. "When gazing at tragedies, bull-fights, crucifixations he hath hitherto felt happier than at any other time on Earth. And when he invented Hell ... lo, Hell was his Heaven on Earth"; he could put up with suffering now, by contemplating the eternal punishment of his oppressors in the other world. — Friedrich Nietzsche

A reminder to himself that even those who appeared the cruelest and most evil in the world were never above salvation. That, by the right actions, anyone's heart could be changed. And a reminder to Cadegan that all people deserved the utmost respect. To remind himself that he never wanted to be the one who brought such pain to another living creature's misery. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

We are to take no counsel with flesh and blood; give ear to no vain cavils, vain sorrows and wishes; to know that we know nothing, that the worst and cruelest to our eyes is not what it seems, that we have to receive whatsoever befalls us as sent from God above, and say, "It is good and wise,
God is great! Though He slay me, yet I trust in Him." Islam means, in its way, denial of self. This is yet the highest wisdom that heaven has revealed to our earth. — Thomas Carlyle

The Internet is what you make of it, obviously ... But the Internet has also been a great aggregator of anxiety and an enabler of our worst tendencies. It has allowed us to trumpet our own opinions, to win attention by broadcasting our laziest and cruelest judgments, to grind axes in public. It has made us feel, in some perverse sense, that we are entitled to do so. — Steve Almond

Hope? Hope is not the absence of tragedy, my friend. It is the conviction that tragedy can be endured. Hope is the spark in you that is not subdued in the face of the vast and callous indifference of the universe. Hope is that which is not shattered by hardship. Hope is the urge to fight what is wrong even when you know it will destroy you. Hope is the decision to love and need someone knowing that they will one day die. For me to promise that there are no obstacles would be the cruelest lie I could possibly tell. That lie is not hope. Hope is the will which needs no lies. — Travis Beacham

In that moment I understood that the cruelest words in the universe are if only. — Lisa See

Surely among the many outlandish successes of AMRV is that it has eradicated from human beings our original sin: hope. But I don't have AMRV, which means I still suffer from the cruelest disease of our species, terminal aspiration. — John Green

February was always the cruelest month for Hunter S. Thompson. An avid NFL fan, Hunter traditionally embraced the Super Bowl in January as the high-water mark of his year. — Douglas Brinkley

Silence is the cruelest means of rejection, even if it only masks confusion or regret. The — Megan Marshall

All about us were people. Perhaps a hundred. Men. Experience had taught me that humans were cruelest when segregated by sex, and the cold feeling in the pit of my stomach became led. What had I let myself in for? — C.S. Friedman

Few boys have been as fortunate as I, raised into manhood with only the gentlest of words and blandishments in my ears and the kindest of caresses upon my person, by a mother who sheltered us from everything that is harsh and ugly in this world. I was spoiled, utterly unprepared for cruelty, and perhaps this sounds like I'm complaining, but I'm not! You mustn't think I blame you. I'm afraid I must sound like the most ungrateful son in the world, when in fact the opposite is true. I am more grateful now than ever for the way you raised us, teaching us the value of kindness, of education, of independent thinking and liberal ideals, in the face of the fascism that is sweeping our country. The cruelest punishments now fail to bring even a tear to my eye, but the thought of the hardship you've suffered on behalf of your ideals makes me weep like a baby. — Ruth Ozeki

April is the cruelest month.' So begins T.S. Eliot's 1922 masterpiece, a 434-line poem titled 'The Waste Land.' Until my employment as a trail maintenance worker, this had simply been a line on a page, albeit a line fraught with metaphorical import and potential. Now I saw it for what it was - a big fat lie - because Eliot grew up in St. Louis and no one forgets what a Missouri summer is like. If the Nobel laureate had been truthful with himself, the opening verse would start out, 'June's a bitch. — Michael Gurnow

This is CID homicide, mister, and neither heat nor rain nor gloom of night will stay these men from their rendezvous with callousness. Cruel jokes? The cruelest. Sick humor? The sickest. And, you ask, how can they possibly do it? Volume. That's right, volume. They won't be outsold, they won't be undersold; they will solve no crime before its time. — David Simon

The truth is that every intelligent man, as you know, dreams of being a gangster and of ruling over society by force alone. As it is not so easy as the detective novels might lead one to believe, one generally relies on politics and joins the cruelest party.What does it matter, after all, if by humiliating one's mind one succeeds in dominating every one? I discovered in myself sweet dreams of oppression. — Albert Camus

Even the most kindest person in the world, can be the most cruelest person. — PureDragonWolf

I lived in a big bunkhouse of thirty farm workers with Leroy, who was a stranger to me in many ways because he was always talking about unions and unity. But he had a way of explaining the meanings of words in utter simplicity, like "work" which he translated into "power," and "power" into "security." I was drawn to him because I felt that he had lived in many places where the courage of men was tested with the cruelest weapons conceivable. — Carlos Bulosan

Love is the cruelest myth of all. — Marie Hall

The cruelest lies are often told in silence. — Robert Louis Stevenson

I shall revenge myself in the cruelest way you can imagine. I shall forget it. — John Steinbeck

Looking at the Jury and the turbulent audience, he might have thought that the usual order of things was reversed, and that the felons were trying the honest men. The lowest, cruelest, and worst populace of a city, never without its quantity of low, cruel, and bad, were the directing spirits of the scene: noisily commenting, applauding, disapproving, anticipating, and precipitating the result, without a check. Of the men, the greater part were armed in various ways; of the women, some wore knives, some daggers, some ate and drank as they looked on, many knitted. Among these last, was one, with a spare piece of knitting under her arm as she worked. — Charles Dickens

Human self-righteousness denies the need for the saving, enabling grace of Christ. Human righteousness embraces the cruelest of Satan's lies, that a person can be righteous by keeping the law. If that were true, there would have been no need for the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Christ. — Paul David Tripp

The Holocaust teaches us that nature, even in its cruelest moments, is benign in comparison with man when he loses his moral compass and his reason. — Samuel Pisar

Not many people understood the inherent pain of a career in heroics. Your body aches from the demands of day-to-day protection. Your mind whirs with the things you did wrong, the ways you could've done better, the scores of citizens you didn't save. And when you lose someone you love, when their blood forms a puddle beneath your cheek while you watch ... Your name, Watcher, becomes the cruelest agony of all. — Shirin Dubbin

Hurt vanity is one of the cruelest of mortal wounds. — Phyllis Bottome

Children get dealt grossly unequal hands, but that is all the more reason to treat them equally in school, Chris thought. "I think the cruelest form of prejudice is ... if I ever said, 'Clarence is poor, so I'll expect less of him than Alice.' Maybe he won't do what Alice does. But I want his best." She knew that precept wasn't as simple as it sounded. Treating children equally often means treating them very differently. But it also means bringing the same moral force to bear on all of them, saying, in effect, to Clarence that you matter as much as Alice and won't get away with not working, and to Alice that you won't be allowed to stay where you are either. — Tracy Kidder

Inflation has ... become the cruelest tax, destroying the value of the dollar and adding new costs to every purchase. — Ella T. Grasso

We slander the hyena; man is the fiercest and cruelest animal. — Henry David Thoreau

That can be the cruelest part of happiness--its tendency to disguise itself in boredom."
- Marie-Helene Bertino, Safe as Houses, title story — Marie-Helene Bertino

Life was a bitch of the cruelest type, but she could be sweet even when she wanted to. "Dis — Leo Sullivan

Though she would never admit it to polite Society, Lady Georgette Thorold hated brandy almost as much as she hated husbands. So it was the cruelest of jokes when she awoke with nary a clue to her surroundings, smelling like one and pressed up against the other. — Jennifer McQuiston

There's no way to tell what will make someone break down in tears. There are some who will cry at the merest melancholy word, and there are some who need the longest, cruelest speech to even dampen one eyelash. There are those who will cry at any sad song but no sad book, and there are those who are immune to the most saddening newspaper articles but will weep for days over a terrible meal. People cry at silence or at violence, in a graveyard or a schoolyard. — Lemony Snicket

Something in our nature cries out to be loved by another. Isolation is devastating to the human psyche. That is why solitary confinement is considered the cruelest of punishments. — Gary Chapman

Love of God thus becomes the dominant passion of life; like every other worth-while love, it demands and inspires sacrifice. But love of God and man, as an ideal, has lately been replaced by the new ideal of tolerance which inspires no sacrifice. Why should any human being in the world be merely tolerated? What man has ever made a sacrifice in the name of tolerance? It leads men, instead, to express their own egotism in a book or a lecture that patronizes the downtrodden group. One of the cruelest things that can happen to a human being is to be tolerated. Never once did Our Lord say, "Tolerate your enemies!" But He did say, "Love your enemies; do good to them that hate you" (Matt. 5:44). Such love can be achieved only if we deliberately curb our fallen nature's animosities. — Fulton J. Sheen

Some of the cruelest men in the world were born with silver tongues. They could charm a bird right out of the sky, only to break its wings. And no men, nice or cruel, offer favors lightly - not strangers. Not to young women. Not without expecting something back in return. — Nenia Campbell

Dauntless is the cruelest of the five
They tear each other to pieces ...
Erudite is the coldest of the five
Knowledge is a costly thing ... — Veronica Roth

Love is hungry and severe. Love is not unselfish or bashful or servile or gentle. Love demands everything. Love is not serene, and it keeps no records. Love sometimes gives up, loses faith, even hope, and it cannot endure everything. Love, sometimes, ends. But its memory lasts forever, and forever it may come again. Love is not a mountain, it is a wheel. No harsher praxis exists in this world. There are three things that will beggar the heart and make it crawl - faith, hope and love - and the cruelest of these is love. — Catherynne M Valente

The human eye has to be one of the cruelest tricks nature ever pulled. We can see a tiny, cone-shaped area of light right in front of our faces, restricted to a very narrow band of the electromagnetic spectrum. We can't see around walls, we can't see heat or cold, we can't see electricity or radio signals, we can't see at a distance. It is a sense so limited that we might as well not have it, yet we have evolved to depend so heavily on it as a species that all other perception has atrophied. We have wound up with the utterly mad and often fatal delusion that if we can't see something, it doesn't exist. Virtually all of civilization's failures can be traced back to that one ominous sentence: 'I'll believe it when I see it.' We can't even convince the public that global warming is dangerous. Why? Because carbon dioxide happens to be invisible. — David Wong

Religious conflict can be the bloodiest and cruelest conflicts that turn people into fanatics. — William J. Brennan Jr.