Cowards are cruel. [ Proverb ]

Fear is cruel and mean. [ Emerson ]

A good thing can't be cruel. [ Dickens ]

He who is only just is cruel. [ Byron ]

I must be cruel, only to be kind. [ William Shakespeare ]

What is more cruel than a tyrant's ear? [ Juvenal ]

Cruel as death, and hungry as the grave. [ Thomson ]

Cruelty is more cruel if we defer the pain. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Fantastic tyrant of the amorous heart,
How hard thy yoke! how cruel is thy dart!
Those escape thy anger who refuse thy sway,
And those are punished most who most obey. [ Prior ]

Cruel people are ever cowards in emergency. [ Swift ]

Oppressive government is more cruel than a tiger. [ Confucius ]

The thought of death is more cruel than death itself. [ De la Boetie ]

Trust not the treason of those smiling looks.
Until ye have their guileful trains well tried;
For they are like but unto golden hooks.
That from the foolish fish their baits do hide:
So she with flattering smiles weak hearts doth guide
Unto her love, and tempt to their decay;
Whom, being caught, she kills with cruel pride,
And feeds at pleasure on the wretched prey. [ Spenser ]

The disobedience of the patient makes the Physician seem cruel. [ Proverb ]

Cruelty is the highest pleasure to the cruel man; it is his love. [ Landor ]

Cowards are cruel, but the brave Love mercy, and delight to save. [ Gay ]

The indulgence of revenge tends to make men more savage and cruel. [ Lord Kames ]

Against rebels it is cruelty to be humane, and humanity to be cruel. [ Corneille Muis ]

Familiarity is a magician that is cruel to beauty, but kind to ugliness. [ Ouida ]

A cruel story runs on wheels, and every hand oils the wheels as they run. [ Ouida ]

Persecution is not wrong because it is cruel; it is cruel because it is wrong. [ Whately ]

Pity is not natural to man. Children are always cruel; savages are always cruel. [ Dr. Johnson ]

The soul, ray of Heaven, invisible prisoner, suffers in its dungeon cruel sorrows. [ A. de Musset ]

A stern discipline pervades all Nature, which is a little cruel that it may be very kind. [ Spenser ]

Everything appertaining to the angler's art is cowardly, cruel, treacherous, and cat-like. [ Chatfield ]

Love is the sweetest of errors - an error of the heart, of which it is cruel to be disabused.

Jealousy is cruel as the grave: the coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame. [ Bible ]

Good Heaven, whose darling attribute we find is boundless grace, and mercy to mankind, abhors the cruel. [ Dryden ]

Men are in general so tricky, so envious, and so cruel, that when we find one who is only weak, we are too happy. [ Voltaire ]

Necessity is cruel, but it is the only test of inward strength. Every fool may live according to his own likings. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

Let me be cruel, not unnatural; I will speak daggers to her; but use none; my tongue and soul in this be hypocrites. [ William Shakespeare ]

Cannon and firearms are cruel and damnable machines. I believe them to have been the direct suggestion of the devil. [ Luther ]

Let us laugh! Our fathers laughed at their miseries, let us laugh at ours too! Why! Lisette is not cruel, nor is my flagon broken! [ Beranger ]

What a cruel jest it would be to condemn those who continually boast of their virtues, to the strict practice of what they profess! [ De Finod ]

A weapon is anything that can serve to wound; and sentiments are perhaps the most cruel weapons man can employ to wound his fellow man. [ Balzac ]

Is death more cruel from a private dagger than in the field from murdering swords of thousands? Or does the number slain make slaughter glorious? [ Gibber ]

How much more mothers love their children than their husbands; the latter are often selfish and cruel; but children cannot separate their mother's from their affection. [ Mme. Paterson Bonaparte ]

The artist is the child in the popular fable, every one of whose tears was a pearl. Ah! the world, that cruel step-mother, beats the poor child the harder to make him shed more pearls. [ Heinrich Heine ]

He that tears away a man's good name tears his flesh from his bones, and, by letting him live, gives him only a cruel opportunity of feeling his misery, of burying his better part, and surviving himself [ South ]