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We are not by nature cruel.

Whoever feels mercy for the cruel is bound to eventually be cruel to the merciful.

One can't be kind to one person and cruel to another.

The force we use on ourselves, to prevent ourselves from loving, is often more cruel than the severest treatment at the hands of one loved.

It's in our ability to selectively engage and disengage our moral standards, and it helps explain how people can be barbarically cruel in one moment and compassionate the next.

Sometimes you have to be cruel... in order to be even crueler.

We cannot live, suffer or die for somebody else, for suffering is too precious to be shared.

Love and death are the two great hinges on which all human sympathies turn.

Belief in a cruel God makes a cruel man.