[Men] act in response to an outward situation, and on being presented with an opportunity to conform to a pattern. If the pattern gives licence to cruelty, so much the better. They take advantage of the licence so thoughtlessly, so thoroughly, that it becomes perfectly clear: the generality of mankind are only waiting for the chance, only waiting for outward circumstance to sanction brutality and allow them to be cruel and brutal to their heart's content. Thomas Mann
Denna is a wild thing, " I explained. "Like a hind or a summer storm. If a storm blows down your house, or breaks a tree, you don't say the storm was mean. It was cruel. It acted according to its nature and something unfortunately...
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Patrick Rothfuss
I am not cruel –only truthful.
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Sylvia Plath
Nevertheless, in this sea of human wretchedness and malice there bloomed at times compassion, as a pale flower blooms in a putrid marsh.
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Henryk Sienkiewicz
Waking up was a daily cruelty, an affront, and she avoided it by not sleeping.
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Gregory Maguire
I think it's perfectly possible to explain how the universe came about without bringing God into it, but I don't know everything, and there may well be a God somewhere, hiding away. Actually, if he is keeping out of sight, it's because he's ashamed of...
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Philip Pullman
More Quotes By Thomas Mann
It is love, not reason, that is stronger than death.
Nothing is more curious and awkward than the relationship of two people who only know each other with their eyes – who meet and observe each other daily, even hourly and who keep up the impression of disinterest either because of morals or because of...
Forbearance in the face of fate, beauty constant under torture, are not merely passive. They are a positive achievement, an explicit triumph.
Laughter is a sunbeam of the soul.
He took in the squeaky music, the vulgar and pining melodies, because passion immobilizes good taste and seriously considers what soberly would be thought of as funny and to be resented.
