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

My aim then was to whip the rebels, to humble their pride, to follow them to their inmost recesses, and make them fear and dread us.

You may as well say, ‘That’s a valiant flea that dare eat his breakfast on the lip of a lion.

If nominated, I will not run; if elected, I will not serve.

If you don’t have my army supplied, and keep it supplied, we’ll eat your mules up, sir.

My aim, then, was to whip the rebels, to humble their pride, to follow them to their inmost recesses, and make them fear and dread us.

Courage – a perfect sensibility of the measure of danger, and a mental willingness to endure it.

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

Grant stood by me when I was crazy, and I stood by him when he was drunk, and now we stand by each other.

There will soon come an armed contest between capital and labor. They will oppose each other, not with words and arguments, but with shot and shell, gun-powder and cannon.

If people don’t like my opinions, it makes little difference as I don’t solicit their opinions or votes.

In our Country… one class of men makes war and leaves another to fight it out.

There is many a boy here today who looks on war as all glory, but, boys, it is all hell.

If forced to choose between the penitentiary and the White House for four years, I would say the penitentiary, thank you.

War is hell.

A battery of field artillery is worth a thousand muskets.

I intend to make Georgia howl.

What is it the Bible teaches us? – raping, cruelty, and murder. What is it the New Testament teaches us? – to believe that the Almighty committed debauchery with a woman engaged to be married, and the belief of this debauchery is called faith.

There is only one unpardonable sin–deliberate cruelty. All else can be forgiven.

He was attached by ties stronger than reason could break — chains, forged by habit, which it would be cruel to attempt to loosen.

Terror made me cruel; and finding it useless to attempt shaking the creature off, I pulled its wrist on to the broken pane, and rubbed it to and fro till the blood ran down and soaked the bedclothes.

Intelligent men are cruel. Stupid men are monstrously cruel.

Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.

Pleasure is oft a visitant; but pain Clings cruelly to us.

I learned that the world didn’t see the inside of you, that it didn’t care a whit about the hopes and dreams, and sorrows, that lay masked by skin and bone. It was as simple, as absurd, and as cruel as that.