It can truly be said: Men are the devils of the earth, and the animals are the tormented souls.

—Arthur Schopenhauer

evil animals cruelty animal cruelty

About Arthur Schopenhauer

Portrait of Arthur Schopenhauer

Arthur Schopenhauer (22 February 1788 – 21 September 1860), also known as the "Philosopher of Pessimism", was a German philosopher and writer. He is known for his 1818 work The World as Will and Representation (expanded in 1844), which characterizes the phenomenal world as the manifestation of a blind and...

More quotations from Arthur Schopenhauer

The first forty years of life give us the text; the next thirty supply the commentary on it.

—Arthur Schopenhauer

Every nation ridicules other nations, and all are right.

—Arthur Schopenhauer

nations patriotism ridicule

If we were not all so interested in ourselves, life would be so uninteresting that none of us would be able to endure it.

—Arthur Schopenhauer

life perspective interest

It is a clear gain to sacrifice pleasure in order to avoid pain.

—Arthur Schopenhauer

pleasure pain sacrifice

As an individual, with your death there will be an end of you. But your individuality is not your true and final being, indeed it is rather the mere expression of it,… only the phenomenon presented in the form of time, and accordingly has both a beginning and an end. Your being in itself, on the contrary, knows neither time, nor beginning, nor end, nor the limits of a given individuality.… So that, in the first sense, after death you become nothing; in the second, you are and remain everything.

—Arthur Schopenhauer

time death infinity individuality existentialism

More quotations tagged with “cruelty”

Such is the common process of marriage. A youth and maiden meeting by chance, or brought together by artifice, exchange glances, reciprocate civilities, go home, and dream of one another. Having little to divert attention, or diversify thought, they find themselves uneasy when they are apart, and therefore conclude that they shall be happy together. They marry, and discover what nothing but voluntary blindness had before concealed; they wear out life in altercations, and charge nature with cruelty.

—Samuel Johnson in The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia

attention love relationships chance happiness marriage cruelty conflict

As one reads history… one is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishments that the good have inflicted; and a community is infinitely more brutalized by the habitual employment of punishment than it is by the occasional occurrence of crime.

history crime cruelty punishment community

If one person is unkind to an animal, it is considered to be cruelty, but where a lot of people are unkind to animals, especially in the name of commerce, the cruelty is condoned and, once sums of money are at stake, will be defended to the last by otherwise intelligent people.

—Ruth Harrison

kindness money animals cruelty commerce

Cruelty is easy, and it breeds only misery. Kindness is harder, and you have to be brave to give it. To be cruel, you can stay closed off from everyone, wear a mask, but to be kind, in essence, to show love, you have to make yourself vulnerable, show your true self to someone and open yourself up to rejection.

—L.H. Cosway in The Nature of Cruelty

love kindness rejection vulnerability misery cruelty bravery

The most appalling cruelties are committed by apparently virtuous governments in expectation of a great good to come, never learning that the evil done now is the sure destroyer of the expected good.

—Katherine Anne Porter

evil good government cruelty

History

26 Apr 2014 Added