cruel quotes

Cruel, but composed and bland, Dumb, inscrutable and grand, SoTiberius might have sat, Had Tiberius been a cat.

- Matthew Arnold
  Poems: Second Series,'Poor Matthias', l.40^3.

Certainly wife and children are a kind of discipline of humanity; and single men, though they be many times more charitable, because their means are less exhaust, yet†they are more cruel and hardhearted (good to make severe inquisitors), becausetheir tenderness isnot so oft called upon.

- Francis,Viscount St Albans Bacon
  Essays, no.8,'Of Marriage and the Single Life'.

Late at e'en, drinkin'the wine, And ere they paid the lawin', They set a combat them between, To fight it at the dawin'. 'O stayat hame, my noble lord, O stay at hame, my marrow! My cruel brother will you betray On the dowie houms o' Yarrow!'

-Ballads
'The Dowie Houms o' Yarrow'.

   The bottom of the sea is cruel.

- (Harold) Hart Crane
  White Buildings,'Voyages', pt.1.

Gilbert had a baddish streak or two in him; and one in particular whichwas not only baddish but so thoroughly caddish that no critic can ignore or, in my view, extenuate it. The man, to summarize, was essentially cruel, and delighted in cruelty.

- SirArthurThomas known as  'Q' Quiller-Couch
  Of W S Gilbert. Studies in Literature, 3rd series,'Lecture on W.S. Gilbert', no.4.

Cruel he looks, but calm and strong, Like one who does, not suffers wrong.

- Percy Bysshe Shelley
  Prometheus Unbound, act1, l.238^9.

What man that sees the ever-whirling wheel Of Change, the which all mortal things doth sway, But that thereby doth find, and plainly feel, How mutability in them doth play Her cruel sports, to many men's decay?

- Edmund Spenser
  The Faerie Queen,'Mutability', canto 6, stanza1.

All cruel people describe themselves as paragons of frankness!

-TennesseeThomas Lanier Williams
  Mrs Goforth.The MilkTrain Doesn't Stop HereAnymore, sc.1.