Idle people are often bored and bored people, unless they sleep a lot, are cruel. It is not accident that boredom and cruelty are great preoccupations in our time.
The butcher relenteth not at the bleating of the lamb; neither is the heart of the cruel moved with distress. But the tears of the compassionate are sweeter than dewdrops, falling from roses on the bosom of spring.
I am sometimes asked "Why do you spend so much of your time and money talking about kindness to animals when there is so much cruelty to men?" I answer: "I am working at the roots."
Cruelty and fear shake hands together.
It is not merely cruelty that leads men to love war, it is excitement.
Cruelty is, perhaps, the worst kid of sin. Intellectual cruelty is certainly the worst kind of cruelty.
Fear is the parent of cruelty.
Cruelty is contagious in uncivilized communities.
Cruelty would be delicious if one could only find some sort of cruelty that didn't really hurt.
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.
