A Quote by Samuel Johnson

Pity is not natural to man. Children always are cruel. Savages are always cruel.

Samuel Johnson

Quote Topics

Always Children Cruel Man Natural Pity Savages

Quote Author

Samuel Johnson
English - Writer
September 18, 1709 - December 13, 1784

Pity is not natural to man. Children are always cruel. Savages are always cruel. Pity is acquired and improved by the cultivation of reason. We may have uneasy sensations from seeing a creature in distress, without pity; for we have not pity unless we wish to relieve them.

Samuel Johnson

Everyone is afraid of you and when folk are afraid of a person it usually means the person is cruel in some way, and I think you are cruel, Miss Marquess, but please don’t punish me for saying it. I think you know you’re cruel. I think you like being cruel. I think calling you cruel is the same as calling someone else kind. And I don’t want to run errands for someone cruel.

Catherynne M. Valente

Children are very cruel, yes. Of course. Children are extraordinarily cruel little creatures.

Dennis Potter

It is from the Bible that man has learned cruelty, rapine, and murder; for the belief of a cruel God makes a cruel man.

Thomas Paine

People speak sometimes about the "bestial" cruelty of man, but that is terribly unjust and offensive to beasts, no animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Belief in a cruel God makes a cruel man.

Thomas Paine

Who looks at me, beholdeth sorrows all, All pain, all torture, woe and all distress; I have no need on other harms to call, As anguish, languor, cruel bitterness, Discomfort, dread, and madness more and less; Methinks from heaven above the tears must rain In pity for my harsh and cruel pain.

Geoffrey Chaucer

It is noble to pity a man who is cruel because he is weak, but it is idiotic and dangerous to allow him to have power.

Kate Horsley

Bullfights are a very cultural thing. I know many people think it's cruel, but so many things are cruel. Hunting, the electric chair, wars. These are all cruel things as well.

Fernando Botero

Cruel and cold is the judgment of man, Cruel as winter, and cold as the snow; But by-and-by will the deed and the plan Be judged by the motive that lieth below.

John L. Bates

I always wonder about psychopaths, just because they have no empathy, does that necessarily mean they enjoy being cruel? Because we all know people who seem to have no empathy that we work with; they're not necessarily cruel.

John Cameron Mitchell

Affection between adults - if they are really adult in mind and not merely grown up children - and creatures so relatively selfish and cruel as children necessarily are without knowing it or meaning it, cannot be called natural.