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

Nature has, herself, I fear, imprinted in man a kind of instinct to inhumanity.

Man is the cruelest animal. At tragedies, bullfights, and crucifixions he has so far felt best on earth; and when he invented hell for himself, behold, that was his heaven on earth.

Opinions which justify cruelty are inspired by cruel impulses.

There is in man a specific lust for cruelty which infects even his passion of pity and makes it savage.

Man is worse than an animal when he is an animal.

The vast majority of the race, whether savage or civilized, are secretly kind-hearted and shrink from inflicting pain, but in the presence of the aggressive and pitiless minority they don't dare to assert themselves.

All cruelty springs from weakness.

A hurtful act is the transference to others of the degradation which we bear in ourselves.

Everyone makes a greater effort to hurt other people than to help himself.