Quotes & Sayings About Viciousness

The evil I'm talking about lives in us all. It takes hold in an individual, in private lives, within a family, adn then it's children who suffer most. And then, when teh conditions are right, in different countries, at different times, a terrible cruelty, a viciousness against life erupts, and everyone is surprised by the depth of hatred within himself. Then it sinks back and waits. It's something in our hearts. — Ian McEwan

It isn't like the rest of the country - it is like a nation itself - more tolerant than the rest in a curious way. Littleness gets swallowed up here. All the viciousness that makes other cities vicious is sucked up and absorbed in New York. — John Steinbeck

There was another matter which caused much disturbance in our mind: the viciousness of sibling rivalry. We knew that kingship knows no kinship. No bridge of affection spans the abyss that separates a monarch from his sons; no bonds of affection exist between the sons of kings. Sired though they may have been by the same loins, lain in succession in the same womb and suckled the same breasts, no sooner were they old enough to know the world than they understood that they must destroy their siblings or be destroyed themselves. — Khushwant Singh

But he knew life, its foulness as well as its fairness, its greatness in spite of the slime that infested it, and by God he was going to have his say on it to the world. Saints in heaven - how could they be anything but fair and pure? No praise to them. But saints in slime - ah, that was the everlasting wonder! That was what made life worth while. To see moral grandeur rising out of cesspools of iniquity; to rise himself and first glimpse beauty, faint and far, through mud- dripping eyes; to see out of weakness, and frailty, and viciousness, and all abysmal brutishness, arising strength, and truth, and high spiritual endowment. — Jack London

That's the hatred that kills you. There'll be more of it, so deep and thick there will always be some left, enough to go around ... it will ooze out over the earth ... and poison it, so nothing will grow but viciousness, among the dead, among men. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

Little sins carry with them but little temptations to sin, and then a man shews most viciousness and unkindness, when he sins on a little temptation. It is devilish to sin without a temptation; it is little less than devilish to sin on a little occasion. The less the temptation is to sin, the greater is that sin. — Thomas Brooks

We have all of us to some extent become inured to a culture where viciousness and depravity are simply taken for granted, like some hideous wallpaper we have lived with for years. — Roger Kimball

Viciousness is part of the world we live in, some of us choose to ignore it with the rationalisation of wanting only positivity to flow our way. How selfish we have become! That the pain of others has become a hindrance to the fulfilment of our positive selves. — Aysha Taryam

As we ascend the social ladder, viciousness wears a thicker mask. — Erich Fromm

Intolerance is a thing that causes war, pogroms, crucifixions, lynchings, and makes people cruel to little children and each other. It is responsible for most of the viciousness, violence, terror, and heart and soul breaking of the world. — Betty Smith

The thing that strikes me more and more, is the extraordinary viciousness and dishonesty of political controversy in our time. I don't mean merely that controversies are acrimonious. They ought to be that when they are on serious subjects. I mean that almost nobody seems to feel that an opponent deserves a fair hearing or that the objective truth matters as long as you can score a neat debating point. — George Orwell

New York is eating young geniuses [businessmen] up alive. It's eating them up alive, Stone. And it's showing the beauty of the city, but it's showing the toughness and the viciousness of the city. — Donald Trump

When you edit, you imagine your enemy is seated on the other side of the table. Your enemy! And your enemy is going to read that with a viciousness, because he knows where you didn't work on it. He's going to shake it and really aim for that jugular. So you are going to polish, and revise, and rewrite, and cut out, and shape it, so that your enemy has no place to grip it. That's how you revise. — Sandra Cisneros

It's common to think things will never happen where you are-never in Cambridge, never in New York, never in Seattle-that sort of thing, whatever it is, never happens here, not in our community. Then it happens, right in front of you, and you realize you were blind to it, that you forgot that intolerance and zealotry and viciousness are human currency everywhere, and it takes your breath away. — Mike Daisey

I regard many of the neoconservatives as personal friends, but that's not stopped them from behaving with extraordinary viciousness towards those of us who raised the immigration issue. — Peter Brimelow

What I know are simple truths. I know that the fabric of memory is reinforced by stories, rent by silences. I know that power dreads memory. I know that memory outlasts power's viciousness. I know . . . that a voiceless man is as good as dead. — Okey Ndibe

Redd's lact of knowledge astounded the tutor. Did she really understand so little about how a Wonderland princess became queen?
She doesn't know what she doesn't know," he mumbled, and then: "Your Imperial Viciousness, perhpas we should speak face-to-face, without this velvet barrier between us. Are you decent?"
I'm never decent! — Frank Beddor

And when I read one of those scapegoat pieces about the "viciousness" of drug pushers, and extolling the basic humanitarianism of the nark-squad hero, I'm saddened. Because it isn't Margo and it isn't Max who keeps the traffic moving: it's that same nark-squad hero with a small, brown paper bag that hustlers and pushers alike have to keep filled if they want to stay on the street. — Nelson Algren

It's bad to be a dragon."
"Says who? Nothing wrong with a little bit of viciousness. Would you rather be a dove or a dragon? — Roshani Chokshi

For the longest time the romantic explanation for low rates of female infection endured: Possession of a womb, it was supposed, conferred a gentleness which simply could not bear the viciousness of a lycanthropic heart. Female werewolves, masculine idiocy maintained, must be killing themselves in crazy numbers ... It's quite extraordinary, given the wealth of historical evidence to the contrary, how long this fallacy of the gentler sex lasted, but the twentieth century (years before Myra and the girls of Abu Ghraib put their two penn'orth in) pretty much did away with it. Now we know: If women don't catch the werewolf bug, it's certainly not because they're sugar and spice and all things nice. — Glen Duncan

The pre-human creature from which man evolved was unlike any other living thing in its malicious viciousness toward its own kind. Humanization was not a leap forward but a groping toward survival. — Eric Hoffer

Humanity is capable of any atrocity," she said. "But when you understand the extent of this cruelty, the unprecedented viciousness, the immense scale of the horror, it seems beyond the power of mere people to conceive and execute. It seems demonic. — Dean Koontz

Roarke is her everything, as she is his. It matters, I think, that these two people who came from abuse and viciousness found each other, helped make each other into better people. Love opened them to more. — Nora Roberts

Your every ill-thought, secreted hate, cynical and vicious judgment you carry is meant only for you. — Bryant McGill

As Hitler did, those who would bend the plowshare of religion into a sword would doubtless do the same with skin color, language differences, ethnic origins or sexula orientation. The need for power and allies always finds a way. The use of religion always comes in handy in facilitating such viciousness. — Carlton D. Pearson

Hazel grew up - did four years in grammar school, four years in reform school, and didn't learn a thing in either place. Reform schools are supposed to teach viciousness and criminality but Hazel didn't pay enough attention. — John Steinbeck

You don't like my dress?"
The vines of Reed's couture streched toward the tutor, the rose's petal-mouths chomping.
It isn't that, Your Imperial Viciousness. The earthlings will not understand you. Not understanding you, they will be frightened and send their petty authorities to apprehend you."
Ha!"
Of course they'll fail. That isn't the point. But you'll have to wast engery dealing with them instead of concentrating on your niece's destruction. I doubt that the way to achive your aim is to spread your strength across many fronts so that, when it's time to battle Alyss, you many not be at the peak of your powers. Your niece, I gather, shouldn't be underestimated."
Vollrath hadn't graduated from the Tutor Corps for nothing. "I don't like when sound reasoning counters my wishes," Redd hissed. — Frank Beddor

All this miraculous hatred. Christ, a man can't eat his breakfast for filling his belly full of it. — Colum McCann

Against ignorance there is no front line. Against viciousness no border can hold. It breeds as readily behind your back as elsewhere.' 'What — Steven Erikson

This was the moment when the 20th century really began, in all its viciousness and bloody-mindedness. Me, I had imagination in spades, though. I saw myself as a corpse, swept into this stream of fools against my will along with thousands, millions of other corpses, and I didn't like it one little bit.
The other guys, still waiting on the platform at the Gare de l'Est, already saw themselves throwing back a well-earned beer on Alexanderplatz.
Only the mothers really knew. They knew the babies in their arms were tomorrow's war orphans, and the cattle cars (8 horses, 40 men) were nothing but rail-mounted coffins joined end to end and headed for military cemeteries. — Jacques Tardi

India and its peoples; not the British India of cantonments and Clubs, or the artificial world of hill stations and horse shows, but that other India: that mixture of glamour and tawdriness, viciousness and nobility. A land full of gods and gold and famine. Ugly as a rotting corpse and beautiful beyond belief ... — M.M. Kaye

shot in the eye
shot in the brain
shot in the ass
shot like a flower in the dance

amazing how death wins hands down
amazing how much credence is given to idiot forms of
life

amazing how laughter has been drowned out
amazing how viciousness is such a constant

I must soon declare my own war on their war
I must hold to my last piece of ground
I must protect the small space I have made that has
allowed me life

my life not their death
my death not their death

this place, this time, now
I vow to the sun
that I will laugh the good laugh once again
in the perfect place of me
forever.

their death not my life. — Charles Bukowski

I asked Shia: who is the guy that terrifies you the most? And he said Mads. So it was somebody we both really wanted to work with. He's intimidating, but has a really big heart and he's sexy. He's got this sexiness, even guys fall for him. He just penetrates everything-not literally. So we needed a brokenhearted thug that could really give us the heartache. And going between the violence and viciousness and the complete softness without making it too much. A lot of those characters can go into a charade, and I needed it to be genuine heartbrokenness and that's what he's great at doing. — Fredrik Bond

I was attacked by two dogs when I was three and a half years old. I'm lucky to be alive. My face was stitched back together and here I still am, gratefully so. I believe that experience shocked me into a deep alliance with the animal world, its beauty and viciousness and terror. — Alison Hawthorne Deming

Taraza cleared her throat. "No need. Lucilla is one of our finest Imprinters. Each of you, of course, received the identical liberal conditioning to prepare you for this." There was something almost insulting in Taraza's casual tone and only the habits of long association put down Odrade's immediate resentment. It was partly that word "liberal," she realized. Atreides ancestors rose up in rebellion at the word. It was as though her accumulated female memories lashed out at the unconscious assumptions and unexamined prejudices behind the concept. "Only liberals really think. Only liberals are intellectual. Only liberals understand the needs of their fellows." How much viciousness lay concealed in that word! Odrade thought. How much secret ego demanding to feel superior. — Frank Herbert

Americans just don't realize the viciousness of the militant Islamic fundamentalist. — Brigitte Gabriel

Pray for your own deliverance from your own vicious thoughts. — Bryant McGill

Erskine was on the other side; and he then supported it by saying, that though the gentleman had originally harpooned the lady, and had once had her fast, and only by reason of the great stress of her plunging viciousness, had at last abandoned her; yet abandon her he did, so that she became a loose-fish; and therefore when a subsequent gentleman re-harpooned her, the lady then became that subsequent gentleman's property, along with whatever — Herman Melville

It is neither easy nor agreeable to dredge this abyss of viciousness, and yet I think it must be done, because what could be perpetrated yesterday could be attempted again tomorrow, could overwhelm us and our children. One is tempted to turn away with a grimace and close one's mind: this is a temptation one must resist. In fact, the existence of the death squads had a meaning, a message: 'We, the master race, are your destroyers, but you are no better than we are; if we so wish, and we do so wish, we can destroy not only your bodies, but also your souls, just as we have destroyed ours. — Primo Levi

Back in grade school, my shrinks tried to channel my viciousness into a constructive outlet, so I cut things with scissors. Heavy, cheap fabrics Diane bought by the bolt. I sliced through them with old metal shears going up and down: hateyouhateyouhateyou. The soft growl of the fabrics as I sliced it apart, and that perfect last moment, when your thumb is getting sore and your shoulders hurt from hunching and cut, cut, cut ... free, the fabric now swaying in two pieces in your hands, a curtain parted. And then what? That's how I felt now, like I'd been sawing away at something and come to the end and here I was by myself again, in my small house with no job, no family, and I was holding two ends of fabric and didn't know what to do next. — Gillian Flynn

I don't need the approval of the press, but I just wish they'd stop the viciousness ... I never felt sorry for people like Lindsay Lohan in my life. I thought they were dopey little movie stars. Now I feel sorry for those people. — Bill O'Reilly

It seemed that young people, despite their fundamental decency, now had to buy into a mind-set which made viciousness and treachery come easy. — Irvine Welsh

Absurdity is the one thing love can't stand; it can overlook anything else,
coldness, or weakness, or viciousness,
but just be ridiculous and that's the end of it! — Margaret Deland

We are well aware that religion is not as bad an influence as it was a short time ago, as history is counted. But it is a sufficiently bad influence even in modern times, and its reduced viciousness (in practice) is due plainly enough to its reduced power. — E. Haldeman-Julius

Witch, he's not coming back," the demon Rydstrom told Mari. "Don't waste your time waiting for him."
Cade asked Mari, "What did you do to the Lykae anyway?"
She absently murmured, "I've killed him."
Mari glanced away from the entrance when met with silence. "He won't regenerate from injuries," she explained. "Unless he returns to me to have it reversed, the hex will eventually destroy him."
Tierney, who looked to be Tera's younger brother, said, "You made him mortal?"
They all seemed shocked at her viciousness, except for Cade, who as far as she could tell from his demonic countenance, appeared admiring. "Remind me not to piss you off, witch," he said. — Kresley Cole

But hatred and viciousness are addictive. You can get high on them. Once you've had a little, you start shaking if you don't get more. — Margaret Atwood

The biggest defeat in every department of life is to forget, especially the things that have done you in, and to die without realizing how far people can go in the way of crumminess. When the grave lies open before us, let's not try to be witty, but on the other hand, let's not forget, but make it our business to record the worst of the human viciousness we've seen without changing one word. When that's done, we can curl up our toes and sink into the pit. That's work enough for a lifetime. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

The vitriol and viciousness is the inevitable result of a government increasingly deciding the vital aspects of people's lives. — A.E. Samaan

It's the suppression of the word that gives it the power, the violence, the viciousness. — Lenny Bruce

Levana's face was fiercely beautiful. Breathtaking in her viciousness. — Marissa Meyer

Let's not forget, but make it our business to record the worst of the human viciousness we've seen without changing one word. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

Wealth is the parent of luxury and indolence, and poverty of meanness and viciousness, and both of discontent. — Plato

One should not seek happiness, just nurture the spirit of joy as the basis of summoning happiness. One should not try to escape misfortune, just get rid of viciousness as a means of avoiding misfortune. — Zicheng Hong

But are sailors, frequenters of fiddlers' greens, without vices? No; but less often than with landsmen do their vices, so called, partake of crookedness of heart, seeming less to proceed from viciousness than exuberance of vitality after long constraint: frank manifestations in accordance with natural law. — Herman Melville

Such uncanny serenity actually frightened him, making him think that perhaps this was a surface impression left behind after any amount of unspeakable viciousness had been digested, or else settled down inside her as a kind of sediment. — Han Kang

For now. But if I ever decide you're useless, you are a dead man."
To be killed by you is to be desired more than a life excluded from your service."
Bravo." Her Imperial Viciousness laughed with genuine feeling. "Bra-vo! — Frank Beddor

Hatred and viciousness are addictive. You can get high on them. — Margaret Atwood

Such a brute should underneath all his braggart tricks, his viciousness, his vileness, be a coward. But I am convinced that he was not. Because even cowardice requires a certain degree of sensitivity, and a certain value for life. — Warren Eyster

There is no man suddenly either excellently good or extremely evil, but grows either as he holds himself up in virtue or lets himself slide to viciousness. — Philip Sidney

So far, so vindictive: par for the Old Testament course. New Testament theology adds a new injustice, topped off by a new sadomasochism whose viciousness even the Old Testament barely exceeds. It is, when you think about it, remarkable that a religion should adopt an instrument of torture and execution as its sacred symbol, often worn around the neck. Lenny — Richard Dawkins

A government which can protect and defend its citizens from wrong and outrage and does not is vicious. A government which would do it and cannot is weak; and where human life is insecure through either weakness or viciousness in the administration of law, there must be a lack of justice and where this is wanting, nothing can make up the deficiency. — Frances Harper

Many people live in an induced spiritual comma; they are inherently vicious, and are completely unaware of their malady. — Bryant McGill

The proponents of Marxian biology appear in unexpected places. In the early disputes over evolution, the most effective aid to the Marxian line came from the humanitarian but conservative Christians, who not only rejected evolution on theological grounds, but who also looked with horror on the amoral viciousness of what they took to be natural selection. Marx himself had also objected to the competitive aspects of natural selection, so both his followers and the more conservative religious groups found themselves on the same side. In fact, the Marxian biologists of the last seventy-five years had their pathways made smooth by the Victorian fundamentalists. — Conway Zirkle

It's big business baby and its smile is hideous.
Top down violence, structural viciousness.
Your kids are doped up on medical sedatives.
But don't worry bout that. Worry bout terrorists.

The water levels rising! The water levels rising!
The animals, the polarbears, the elephants are dying!
Stop crying. Start buying.
But what about the oil spill?
Shh. No one likes a party pooping spoil sport.

Massacres massacres massacres/new shoes
Ghettoised children murdered in broad daylight by those employed to protect them.
Live porn streamed to your pre-teens bedrooms.
Glass ceiling, no headroom. Half a generation live beneath the breadline. — Kate Tempest

Do they really think that a limited intellect means a child can't feel viciousness in a person's touch or hear anger in the tone of their voice? — Martin Pistorius

The only difference, I suppose, between them and me is that I never set out to write shit. (That is: merely sufficient, average.) And of all the crimes that may be attributed to me - numbering among them rudeness, lechery, viciousness, imprudence and disgusting egocentricity - the one that can never be laid on me is the one epitomized by the line, I just write what they want, by Tuesday, take the money and run. — Harlan Ellison

There are many good people who are denied the supreme blessing of children, and for these we have the respect and sympathy always due to those who, from no fault of their own, are denied any of the other great blessings of life. But the man or woman who deliberately foregoes these blessings, whether from viciousness, coldness, shallow-heartedness, self-indulgence, or mere failure to appreciate aright the difference between the all-important and the unimportant - why, such a creature merits contempt as hearty as any visited upon the soldier who runs away in battle, or upon the man who refuses to work for the support of those dependent upon him, and who though able-bodied is yet content to eat in idleness the bread which others provide. — Theodore Roosevelt

Forgiveness is "selective remembering" - a conscious decision to focus on love and let the rest go. But the ego is relentless - it is "capable of suspiciousness at best and viciousness at worst. — Marianne Williamson

Light always underestimates the viciousness of Darkness — P.C. Cast

You think because you are born of light that you're somehow better and kinder than those who aren't, but you're not. It merely makes you feel entitled in your wrongful actions against others. But, you're no better than my mother. If anything you're worse because you think your viciousness is justified ... — Sherrilyn Kenyon