Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Cruelty
Man’s inhumanity to man
Makes countless thousands mourn!
Burns—Man Was Made to Mourn.
Contre les rebelles c’est cruauté que d’estre humain, et humanité d’estre cruel.
It is cruelty to be humane to rebels, and humanity is cruelty.
Attributed to Charles IX. According to M. Fournier, an expression taken from a sermon of Corneille Muis, Bishop of Bitoute. Used by Catherine De Medicis.
Detested sport,
That owes its pleasures to another’s pain.
Cowper—The Task. Bk. III. L. 326.
It is not linen you’re wearing out,
But human creatures’ lives.
Hood—Song of the Shirt.
Even bear-baiting was esteemed heathenish and unchristian: the sport of it, not the inhumanity, gave offence.
Hume—History of England. Vol. I. Ch. LXII.
An angel with a trumpet said,
“Forever more, forever more,
The reign of violence is o’er!”
Longfellow—The Occultation of Orion. St. 6.
Je voudrais bien voir la grimace qu’il fait à cette heure sur cet échafaud.
I would love to see the grimace he [Marquis de Cinq-Mars] is now making on the scaffold.
Louis XIII. See Histoire de Louis XIII. IV. P. 416.
Gaudensque viam fecisse ruina.
He rejoices to have made his way by ruin.
Lucan—Pharsalia. I. 150.
The Puritan hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.
Macaulay—History of England. Vol. I. Ch. II.
I must be cruel, only to be kind.
Hamlet. Act III. Sc. 4. L. 178.
Men so noble,
However faulty, yet should find respect
For what they have been; ’tis a cruelty
To load a falling man.
Henry VIII. Act V. Sc. 3. L. 74.
See what a rent the envious Casca made.
Julius Cæsar. Act III. Sc. 2. L. 179.
You are the cruell’st she alive,
If you will lead these graces to the grave
And leave the world no copy.
Twelfth Night. Act I. Sc. 5. L. 259.
If ever henceforth thou
These rural latches to his entrance open,
Or hoop his body more with thy embraces,
I will devise a death as cruel for thee
As thou art tender to’t.
Winter’s Tale. Act IV. Sc. 4. L. 448.
Inhumanity is caught from man,
From smiling man.
Young—Night Thoughts. Night V. L. 158.