“Pity is cruel. Pity destroys.”

It’s a strange thing to discover and to believe that you are loved when you know that there is nothing in you for anybody but a parent or a God to love.

One can’t love humanity. One can only love people.

Innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm.

In our hearts there is a ruthless dictator, ready to contemplate the misery of a thousand strangers if it will ensure the happiness of the few we love.

Every monologue sooner or later becomes a discussion.

Reality in our century is not something to be faced.

It is always of interest to know what strikes another human being as remarkable.

Sweet are the thoughts that savor of content: the quiet mind is richer than a crown.

The truth has never been of any real value to any human being – it is a symbol for mathematicians and philosophers to pursue. In human relations kindness and lies are worth a thousand truths.

Despair is the price one pays for setting himself an impossible aim.

There’s a virtue in slowness, which we have lost.

We are all of us resigned to death: it’s life we aren’t resigned to.

Sometimes I see myself reflected too closely in other men for comfort, and then I have an enormous wish to believe in the saints, in heroic virtue.

Sooner or later; one has to take sides. If one is to remain human.

It is a great danger for everyone when what is shocking changes.

Destruction after all is a form of creation.

If the people raise a great howl against my barbarity and cruelty.

The only unforgivable sin is deliberate cruelty.

War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over.

Because it is in the nature of things that they become extreme, we have passed down from manliness to cruelty. If I had been told when I was 20 that there was a tavern in the town where the brave and the cruel were gathered together,

You are permitted to be cruel sometimes, and you are allowed to fall apart, and feel every emotion they tell you not to feel.

And, unfortunately, the cruelty and killing are often justified through a distorted interpretation of religion

Dictatorships foster oppression, dictatorships foster servitude, dictatorships foster cruelty; more abominable is the fact that they foster idiocy.

If there’s one thing you can say about mankind, there’s nothing kind about man.