Definition of Cruelty

Cruelty

The attribute or quality of being cruel; a disposition to give unnecessary pain or suffering to others; inhumanity; barbarity.

A cruel and barbarous deed; inhuman treatment; the act of willfully causing unnecessary pain.

Related Definitions:

Act, And, Attribute, Barbarity, Barbarous, Being, Causing, Cruel, Deed, Disposition, Give, Inhuman, Inhumanity, Of, Or, Pain, Quality, Suffering, The, To, Treatment

Cruelty Quotations

The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Farewell, fair cruelty.
William Shakespeare

Cruelty would be delicious if one could only find some sort of cruelty that didn't really hurt.
George Bernard Shaw

The impulse to cruelty is, in many people, almost as violent as the impulse to sexual love - almost as violent and much more mischievous.
Aldous Huxley

What is a wife and what is a harlot? What is a church and what is a theatre? are they two and not one? Can they exist separate? Are not religion and politics the same thing? Brotherhood is religion. O demonstrations of reason dividing families in cruelty and pride!
William Blake

The cemetery of the victims of human cruelty in our century is extended to include yet another vast cemetery, that of the unborn.
Pope John Paul II

Ignorant kindness may have the effect of cruelty; but to be angry with it as if it were direct cruelty would be an ignorant unkindness.
George Eliot

Cruelty, like every other vice, requires no motive outside of itself; it only requires opportunity.
George Eliot

There is nothing so desperately monotonous as the sea, and I no longer wonder at the cruelty of pirates.
James Russell Lowell

To insult someone we call him "bestial." For deliberate cruelty and nature, "human" might be the greater insult.
Isaac Asimov

Lust is to the other passions what the nervous fluid is to life; it supports them all, lends strength to them all ambition, cruelty, avarice, revenge, are all founded on lust.
Marquis de Sade

The terrorists are fighting freedom with all their cunning and cruelty because freedom is their greatest fear - and they should be afraid, because freedom is on the march.
George W. Bush

The course of this conflict is not known, yet its outcome is certain. Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty, have always been at war, and we know that God is not neutral between them.
George W. Bush

The Haitian people are gentle and lovable except for their enormous and unconscious cruelty.
Zora Neale Hurston

Men feel that cruelty to the poor is a kind of cruelty to animals. They never feel that it is an injustice to equals; nay it is treachery to comrades.
Gilbert K. Chesterton

Cruelty is, perhaps, the worst kid of sin. Intellectual cruelty is certainly the worst kind of cruelty.
Gilbert K. Chesterton

Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.
Bertrand Russell

The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they invented Hell.
Bertrand Russell

In a serious struggle there is no worse cruelty than to be magnanimous at an inopportune time.
Leon Trotsky

World's use is cold, world's love is vain, world's cruelty is bitter bane; but is not the fruit of pain.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Cruelty is a tyrant that's always attended with fear.
Thomas Fuller

If the people raise a great howl against my barbarity and cruelty, I will answer that war is war, and not popularity seeking.
William Tecumseh Sherman

War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over.
William Tecumseh Sherman

Cruelty towards others is always also cruelty towards ourselves.
Paul Tillich

Fantasy is toxic: the private cruelty and the world war both have their start in the heated brain.
Elizabeth Bowen

My loathings are simple: stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music.
Vladimir Nabokov

All cruelty springs from weakness.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Christ and The Church: If he were to apply for a divorce on the grounds of cruelty, adultery and desertion, he would probably get one.
Samuel Butler

It may be a mistake, that man, in a state of nature, is more disposed to cruelty than courtesy.
Mercy Otis Warren

Cruelty is the law pervading all nature and society; and we can't get out of it if we would.
Thomas Hardy

More Cruelty Quotations

Cruelty Translations

cruelty in German is Grausamkeit
cruelty in Italian is efferatezza, maltrattamento
cruelty in Latin is crudelitas, atrocitas
cruelty in Norwegian is grusomhet
cruelty in Spanish is sevicia, crueldad, maltrato
cruelty in Swedish is grymhet

Share with your Friends

Everyone likes a good quote - don't forget to share.