Unkindness Quotes

Unkindness involves a failure of the imagination so acute that it threatens not just our happiness but our sanity. Caring ~ Adam Phillips

All too often women believe it is a sign of commitment, an expression of love, to endure unkindness or cruelty, to forgive and forget. In actuality, when we love rightly we know that the healthy, loving response to cruelty and abuse is putting ourselves out of harm's way. ~ Bell Hooks

Unkindness to anything means an injustice to that thing. If I am unkind to you I do you an injustice, or wrong you in some way. On the other hand, if I try to assist you in every way that I can to make a better citizen and in every way to do my very best for you, I am kind to you. The above principles apply with equal force to the soil. The farmer whose soil produces less every year, is unkind to it in some way; that is, he is not doing by it what he should; he is robbing it of some substance it must have, and he becomes, therefore, a soil robber rather than a progressive farmer. ~ George Washington Carver

Man's meanness is a fuse in search of a flame. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zafon

I could not think of being unkind, even to a mortal enemy. It would hurt me. I see so much unkindness in the world, and there is no excuse for me to add to it. When you love God, and when you see God in every soul, you cannot be mean. If someone behaves hurtfully toward you, think of the best ways to behave lovingly toward him ... ~ Paramahansa Yogananda

There's not a woman in the book, the plot hinges on unkindness to animals, and the black characters mostly drown by Chapter 29. ~ P. J. O'Rourke

A person (lacking mastery) holds a thought in mind, whether it is beneficial to him or not, without knowing the result which will come from it. It is like a child who holds a rattle in his hand and hits his head with the rattle and cries with the pain, and yet does not throw the rattle away. There are many who keep in their mind a thought of illness or a thought of unkindness done to them by someone and suffer from it, yet not knowing what it is that makes them suffer so, nor understanding the reason of their suffering. ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan

Meanness is a monster that usurps your self-control because you cowardly allow it to conquer you. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

It is, after all, a simple and tragic thing that on occasion our unkindness to others is actually a desperate effort to be kind to ourselves. ~ Tahereh Mafi

I would like that very much. You have a bargain, lady. I will find you here among the lost souls, trapped women, and birds. I find that my own state has improved, if only slightly. Where I was once likely to travel in the presence of a murder of crows, I find I will only be burdened by an unkindness of ravens. It gives me heart." - A. E. Poe in Nevermore ~ David Niall Wilson

Her father sat her down and spoke to her with great seriousness. "You are not a witch, Katerina. There is magic in the world, and some of it is wholesome, and some of it is not, but it is a thing that is in the blood, and it is not in yours.
"The foolish will always treat you badly, because they think you are not beautiful," he said, and she knew this was true. Plain Kate. She was a plain as a stick and thin as a stick and flat as a stick. Her nose was too long and her brows too strong. Her father kissed her twice, once above each brow. "We cannot help what fools think. But understand, it is your skill with a blade that draws this talk. If you want to give up your carving, you have my blessing."
"I will never give it up," she answered. ~ Erin Bow

Kindness in ourselves is the honey that blunts the sting of unkindness in another. ~ Walter Savage Landor

If everyone howled at every injustice, every act of barbarism, every act of unkindness, then we would be taking the first step towards a real humanity. ~ Nelson DeMille

As "unkindness has no remedy at law," let its avoidance be with you a point of honor. ~ Hosea Ballou

She's so pretty, isn't she? Beautiful, really. That prefect skin, those long legs. And that hair! It's so black. Black as a raven's feather, that's what my mother used to say. Do you know, Ellie, what a group of ravens is called? [...] It's called an Unkindness. Isn't that strange? An Unkindness. Well... it's something to think about. ~ Amy S. Foster

The greatest sorrow and burden you can lay on the Father, the greatest unkindness you can do to him is not to believe that he loves you. ~ John Owen

What multiplies is only up to us. Whether it is kindness that multiplies; or unkindness. Whether it is goodwill that multiplies; or bad intentions. Whether it is love that multiplies; or fear. Whether it is truth that multiplies; or doubt. What multiplies in our own minds, in our relationships with other people, in our relationship with our perspectives about the rest of the world, in our relationship with God, in our outlooks and in our hearts - it's all up to us. The power of multiplication is in our own hands. What you magnify upon will in fact become your reality. ~ C. JoyBell C.

An unkindness of ravens flew from the north and landed in a rustle in the surrounding trees with varied sounds of begging and recognition. Years ago, the local ravens had figured out that Lorth not only walked with death but also left portions of his kills for his eldritch companions. The creatures always seemed to know where he was, a sense born of thousands of years of hunting with wolves. ~ F.T. McKinstry

Grace is what picks me up and lifts my wings high above and I fly! Grace always conquers! Be graceful in everything; in anger, in sadness, in joy, in kindness, in unkindness, retain grace with you! ~ C. JoyBell C.

Be still, my soul, be still; the arms you bear are brittle,
Earth and high heaven are fixt of old and founded strong.
Think rather,
call to thought, if now you grieve a little,
The days when we had rest, O soul, for they were long.
Men loved unkindness then, but lightless in the quarry
I slept and saw not; tears fell down, I did not mourn;
Sweat ran and blood sprang out and I was never sorry:
Then it was well with me, in days ere I was born.
Now, and I muse for why and never find the reason,
I pace the earth, and drink the air, and feel the sun.
Be still, be still, my soul; it is but for a season:
Let us endure an hour and see injustice done.
Ay, look: high heaven and earth ail from the prime foundation;
All thoughts to rive the heart are here, and all are vain:
Horror and scorn and hate and fear and indignation
Oh why did I awake? when shall I sleep again? ~ A.E. Housman

Elizabeth related to Jane the next day what had passed between Mr. Wickham and herself. Jane listened with astonishment and concern; she knew not how to believe that Mr. Darcy could be so unworthy of Mr. Bingley's regard; and yet, it was not in her nature to question the veracity of a young man of such amiable appearance as Wickham. The possibility of his having endured such unkindness, was enough to interest all her tender feelings; and nothing remained therefore to be done, but to think well of them both, to defend the conduct of each, and throw into the account of accident or mistake whatever could not be otherwise explained. ~ Jane Austen

Unkind language is sure to produce the fruits of unkindness
that is, suffering in the bosom of others. ~ Jeremy Bentham

I am a pretty emotional person. Any act of kindness or unkindness moves me. When I see a romantic couple sitting by the beach, it moves me. I don't break down or crack under pressure, but I am just sensitive. ~ Nimrat Kaur

Every sufferer who bears pain, or slander, or loss, or personal unkindness for Christ's sake, is filling up that amount of suffering which is necessary to the bringing together of the whole body of Christ, and the upbuilding of His elect Church. ~ Charles Spurgeon

You would think those who have endured unkindness would be kinder as a result, intent on sparing others the awful suffering they abhorred firsthand. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

Every single one of the major world faiths, whether we're talking about Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Darwinism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, have all come to the conclusion that what holds us back from our better self is ego, selfishness, greed, unkindness, hatred. And it all springs from a sense of thwarted ego. ~ Karen Armstrong

When the veil of death has been drawn between us and the objects of our regard, how quick-sighted do we become to their merits, and how bitterly do we remember words, or even looks, of unkindness which may have escaped in our intercourse with them. ~ Reginald Heber

A nod at Beatrice who held absolutely still. "She said she would come with me. She insisted on it. She stamped her little foot at me."
He pointed down to her toes as if she were a child yet.
Then he straightened his shoulders. "But I sent her back to the nursery, where she belonged, and told her to play with her dolls instead. As everyone knows, a female on a hunt is a distraction at best and bad luck at worse."
Which explained why Beatrice went into the woods with her hound alone, George thought. She looked now as though she had gone to some other place where she could not hear her father's words and thus could not be hurt by them. George wondered how often she was forced to go to that place.
Did King Helm not see how much she was like him? It seemed she was rejected for any sign of femininity yet also rejected for not showing enough femininity, How could she win? ~ Mette Ivie Harrison

I really didn't want to be a part of the world because I found that the world was filled with unkindness. People didn't love each other. ~ Frederick Lenz

I saw her simplicity, her ignorance, her childish unkindness, her unpretty anxious little face. She was not beautiful or brilliantly clever. How false it is to say that love is blind. I could even judge her, I could even condemn her, I could even, in some possible galactic loop of thought, make her suffer. ~ Iris Murdoch

Listen to me. Forget all you saw. Leave it. Take your mind from it. It has nothing to do with you. But use it for experience. Now you know what hurt it brings to women when men come into the world. Remember, and make it up to your Mama and to all women ... And another thing let it do. There is no room for pride in any man. There is no room for unkindness. There is not room for wit at the expense of others. All men are born the same, and equal. As you saw today, so come Captains and the Kings and the Tinkers and the Tailors. Let the memory direct your dealings with men and women. And be sure to take good care of Mama. Is it? ~ Richard Llewellyn

You cannot say to the sun, 'More sun,' or to the rain, 'Less rain.' To a man, geisha can only be half a wife. We are the wives of nightfall. And yet, to learn kindness after so much unkindness, to understand that a little girl with more courage than she knew, would find her prayers were answered, can that not be called happiness? After all these are not the memoirs of an empress, nor of a queen. These are memoirs of another kind. ~ Arthur Golden

We are a parliament of idiots. A murder of fools."
"No," said Jest, his voice soft. "That would be an unkindness. ~ Marissa Meyer

The biggest threat against the survival of humanity is not brutality and unkindness, it is stupidity and selfishness. ~ M.F. Moonzajer

Most men and women born in the fifties or earlier were socialized to believe that marriages and/or committed romantic bonds of any kind should take precedence over all other relationships. Had I been evaluating my relationships from a standpoint that emphasized growth rather than duty and obligation, I would have understood that abuse irreparably undermines bonds. All too often women believe it is a sign of commitment, an expression of love, to endure unkindness or cruelty, to forgive and forget. In actuality, when we love rightly we know that the healthy, loving response to cruelty and abuse is putting ourselves out of harm's way ... Women who would no more tolerate a friendship in which they were emotionally and physically abused stay in romantic relationships where these violations occur regularly. Had they brought to these bonds the same standards they bring to friendship they would not accept victimization. ~ Bell Hooks

And his unkindness may defeat my life, But never taint my love. ~ William Shakespeare

I have had to contend against the unkindness of his sister, and the insolence of his mother; and have suffered the punishment of an attachment, without enjoying its advantages. ~ Jane Austen

It still took years for me to let go of learned pattern's of behavior that negated my capacity to give and receive love. One pattern that made the practice of love especially difficult was my constantly choosing to be with men who were emotionally wounded, who were not that interested in loving, even though they desired to be loved. I wanted to know love but was afraid to be intimate. By choosing men who were not interested in being loving, I was able to practice giving love but always within an unfufilling context. Naturally, my need to receive love was not met. I got what I was accustomed to getting. Care and affection, usually mingled with a degree of unkindness, neglect, and on some occasions, out right cruelty. ~ Bell Hooks

Deeds that seemed unimportant at the time would prove to have been momentous; a tiny act of selfishness and unkindness or, conversely, an unconsidered act of generosity would become the measure of a human life ~ Karen Armstrong

We go from one darkness to another and in between, the hidden light of the world, of knowledge. We open our eyes and in this circle of light, we see not just ourselves but others who are our likenesses. This light tells us all men are brothers, but even brothers kill one another, and it is in this light where all this happens. But living in this dazzling light does not blind us to what lies beyond the darkness from where we emerged and where we are going. It is faith which makes our journey possible though it be marred by the unkindness of men, their eternal faulting, before we pass on to another darkness. ~ F. Sionil Jose

In the ferment of our civil societies, from which the guardian angels seem to depart, we see many every moment sliding at the brink. What anguishes are rankling in the lees of the soul, the heart-nipping unkindness of a man's friends, his defeated endeavours ! betwixt the birth and death of the mind, what swallowing seas, and storms of mortal miseries ! And when the wildfire is in the heart and he is made mad, the incontinent hands would wreak the harm upon his own head, to blot out the abhorred illusion of the world and the desolate remembrance of himself. Succoured in the forsaken hour, when his courage swerved, with the perfume of human kindness, he might have been to-day alive. Many have looked for consolation, in the imbecility of their souls, who found perhaps hardness of face and contra-diction ; they perished untimely in default of our humanity. ~ Charles M. Doughty

We got dressed, and walked downstairs and into the parlor. Everyone was clean in the clean parlor, and waiting for supper, sitting patiently but unrelaxed; with labor past, with hands unbusied, with mind unmolested, they sat very tired waiting for their food and for their few hours of quiet and for their few hours of sleep; and for the next morning, and for the next evening, and for a Sunday, and for another week and Sunday; for autumn and for winter, for spring and for summer; for another year, for another ten; for the slow chemistry of change and age; for the loss of pigments and tissues, of senses and wits, of faculties and perceptions; for the silencing of all clamor and the sealing of all sight; for the final levelling of all desire, of all despair, of all joy, of all tribulations; for the final quelling of all fear and pride and love and disaffection; for the final dissolution of the flesh and of all that flesh must suffer, sickness of soul and body, fast-withering delight and clouded love, unkindness and grief and wrong beyond reckoning; for the final resolution of all the good they had wrought, and all the ill; they sat resting after battle, with quiet hands and unperceiving eyes, without emotion to receive once more the deliberate edge of evening. ~ James Agee

One bad turn does not excuse another. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

I wish I could tell you how lonely I am. How cold and harsh it is here. Everywhere there is conflict and unkindness. I think God has forsaken this place. I believe I have seen hell and it's white, it's snow-white. ~ Elizabeth Gaskell

But, sir, they have written me down upon the history of the country as worthy of expulsion, and in no unkindness I must tell them that for all future time my self-respect requires that I shall pass them as strangers. ~ Preston Brooks

When you die, no matter who you are,
you may be remembered for your courage
or despised for your cowardice,
you may be remembered for your gratitude
or despised for your bitterness,
you may be remembered for your benevolence
or despised for your meanness,
you may be remembered for your modesty
or despised for your arrogance,
you may be remembered for your peace
or despised for your violence,
you may be remembered for your compassion
or despised for your ruthlessness,
you may be remembered for your mercy
or despised for your vengeance,
you may be remembered for your love
or despised for your unkindness,
you may be remembered for your strengths
or despised for your weaknesses,
you may be remembered for your virtues
or despised for your unrighteousness,
you may be remembered for your knowledge
or despised for your ignorance,
you may be remembered for your wisdom
or despised for your foolishness,
and you may be remembered for your accomplishments
or despised for your incompetence.

When I die, I want to be remembered
for my smile, not my tears;
for my laughter, not my pain;
for my joy, not my grief;
for my patience, not my anger;
for my friends, not my enemies;
for my mind, not my riches;
for my heart, not my titles;
for my soul, not my achievements;
for my triumphs, not my tragedies; ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

What virtue is there in a man who demonstrates goodness because he has been bred to it? It is his habit from youth. But a man who has known unkindness and want, for him to be kind and charitable to those who have been the cause of his misfortunes, that is a virtuous man. ~ Deanna Raybourn

There are some people who don't realize what it is they are doing to others until they are paid back in their own coin. But those are not the worst. The worst are those whose unkindness is calculated. ~ Elizabeth Goudge

I knew it was easier to drill things in than to take them out.'
'It's like a screw!' Craig-Vyvyan shouted.... 'If you pull off it's head, you never get it out. ~ Mark Helprin

Mutually caring relationships require kindness and patience, tolerance, optimism, joy in the other's achievements, confidence in oneself, and the ability to give without undue thought of gain. We need to accept the fact that it's not in the power of any human being to provide all these things all the time. for any of us, mutually caring relationships will always include some measure of unkindness and impatience, intolerance, pessimism, envy, self-doubt, and disappointment. ~ Fred Rogers

I tremble for our world, where, in the smallest of ways, we find it impossible ... to find room for the other in our minds. If we cannot accommodate a viewpoint in a friend without resorting to unkindness, how can we hope to heal the terrible problems of our planet? ~ Karen Armstrong

Never permit me to disgrace my high vocation by giving way to coldness, unkindness, or impatience. ~ Mother Teresa

What folly made young people, even those in middle age, think they were immortal? How much better, their lives, if they could remember the end. Carrying your death with you every day would make it hard to waste time on unkindness and anger and bitterness, on anything petty. That was the secret: remembering your dying time, in order to keep the stupid and the ugly out of your living time. ~ Rohinton Mistry

If you are a true Christian, you will not give way at home to bad temper, impatience, fault-finding, sarcasm, unkindness, suspicion, selfishness, or laziness. ~ Billy Graham

Feelings of bitterness and dissatisfaction feed upon themselves and give place to thoughts and acts of unkindness, criticism, and eventually even hatred. Criticism is often motivated by a desire to rationalize one's own shortcomings and to justify termination of sacred marriage covenants. ~ Richard G. Scott

I continued writing the bad plays which fortunately nobody would produce, just as no one did me the unkindness of publishing my early novels. ~ Patrick White

Negativity poisons my mind, and positivity restores it. I have a choice whether to join in the darkness of the world, its petty judgments, and constant blame. When I do so I inject my psyche with poison, and today I choose a healthy mind. I replace all negativity with a positive attitude, in which I seek to find, and to articulate, the good in every heart. If I disagree, I will disagree with honor. If I debate a point, I will debate with respect. If I need to draw a line for the sake of justice, I will do so with an honor for the dignity of all. I will no longer be careless with the working of my mind. Rather, I will use it as it was created by God to be used, as a conduit for love and a gateway to peace. May everyone, including myself, feel the tenderness of my approval and not the harshness of my unkindness. ~ Marianne Williamson

WOMEN ON THEIR OWN RUN in Alice's family. This dawns on her with the unkindness of a heart attack and she sits up in bed to get a closer look at her thoughts, which have collected above her in the dark. ~ Barbara Kingsolver

forgiveness. It is not in denying the hopeless days that take place when others reject us or turn on us. It is not in minimizing the pain we experience at the hands of those who seem bent on ruining our lives. People turn on people. They betray one another. Crass unkindness, vicious plottings, horrible and intentional antagonisms are shown, and calling it a hopeless day hardly describes the extended season of struggle that many of us face at times. But there is a lesson at Calvary. Forgive everyone - anyone - whom you think has failed you, hurt you, offended you. If you think they've done anything to ruin your day, ruin your life, ruin your opportunities, ruin your dreams, or block your goals - forgive them. Forgiving others is the key to living in the liberty of the freeing forgiveness Jesus has given us, and it's the first step toward finding hope for a hopeless day, not to mention opening the door to new days unimagined. ~ Jack W. Hayford

The garden is the place I go for refuge and shelter, not the house. In the house are duties and annoyances, servants to exhort and admonish, furniture, and meals; but out there blessings crowd round me at every step
it is there that I am sorry for the unkindness in me, for those selfish thoughts that are so much worse than they feel; it is there that all my sins and silliness are forgiven, there that I feel protected and at home, and every flower and weed is a friend and every tree a lover. When I have been vexed I run to them for comfort, and when I have been angry without just cause, it is there I find absolution. Did ever a woman have so many friends? And always the same, always ready to welcome me and fill me with cheerful thoughts. Happy children of a common Father, why should I, their own sister, be less content and joyous than they? ~ Elizabeth Von Arnim

Unkindness is inspired by hatred, anger fuels it into action in which there is no great joy; it would take sadism to turn it into something pleasurable; unkind people imagine themselves to be inflicting pain on someone equally unkind. ~ Marcel Proust

The cherry trees are disconsolate lovers;
they can't hold their pink smiles
after the unkindness of that night.
The wind here is straight from Chicago -
it will snap you unless you bend.
The news from far-off money towns
is the clamor of falling towers.

Yet my woolly dog is happy chasing
a well-chewed stick and a wet spaniel,
a green-headed duck is talking quarks
with a brown-headed duck on the lake shore,
and my friend is reading poems of spring
in a language she knows only in dreams.
The wild cherries will bloom again. ~ Robert Moss

Drink down all unkindness. ~ William Shakespeare

As a tender and loving friend is grieved at the unkindness of his friend ... so is it with this tender and loving Spirit, who hath chosen our hearts for a habitation to dwell in. ~ John Owen

We don't accept your world your rules your wars We don't accept your cruelty and unkindness. We don't believe some need to suffer for others to survive or that there isn't enough to go around or that corporations are the only and best economic arrangement. And ~ Eve Ensler

I would injure no man, and should provoke no resentment. I would relieve every distress, and should enjoy the benedictions of gratitude. I would choose my friends among the wise and my wife among the virtuous, and therefore should be in no danger from treachery or unkindness. My children should by my care be learned and pious, and would repay to my age what their childhood had received. ~ Samuel Johnson

The woman who looks to God in the face of unkindness becomes more beautiful through suffering. Her face does not bear the lines of bitterness and a disturbed countenance. She displays a rare and remarkable beauty because she has learned to wait upon God. Her happiness is out of reach of those who have wronged her. ~ Carolyn Mahaney

Worry, hate, fear-together with their offshoots: anxiety, bitterness, impatience, avarice, unkindness, judgmentalness, and condemnation-all attack the body at the cellular level. It is impossible to have a healthy body under these conditions. ~ Neale Donald Walsch

I long to be ... Like Other People! The extraordinary, ungetatable, oddly cruel Other People, with their way of wantonly hurting and then accusing you of being thin-skinned, sulky, vindictive or ridiculous. ~ Jean Rhys

Unkindness almost always stands for the displeasure that one has in oneself. ~ Adrienne Monnier

If one believed in angels one would feel that they must love us best when we are asleep and cannot hurt each other; and what a mercy it is that once in every twenty-four hours we are too utterly weary to go on being unkind. ~ Elizabeth Von Arnim

One of the keys to our present definition of good taste is that it is better to be kind than to be 'correct.' There is no situation in which it is smart to be nasty. ~ Millicent Fenwick

Edith, in her veal-coloured room in the Hotel du Lac, sat with her hands in her lap, wondering what she was doing there. And then remembered, and trembled. And thought with shame of her small injustices, of her unworthy thoughts towards those excellent women who had befriended her, and to whom she had revealed nothing. I have been too harsh on women, she thought, because I understand them better than I understand men. I know their watchfulness, their patience, their need to advertise themselves as successful. Their need never to admit to a failure. I know all that because I am one of them. I am harsh because I remember Mother and her unkindness, and because I am continually on the alert for more. But women are not all like Mother, and it is really stupid of me to imagine that they are. Edith, Father would have said, think a little. You have made a false equation. ~ Anita Brookner

I see
In many an eye that measures me
The mortal sickness of a mind
Too unhappy to be kind.
Undone with misery, all they can
Is to hate their fellow man;

- from Poem XLI ~ A.E. Housman

Barking at people earns their respect about as effectively as staring into the sun improves your vision. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

The unkindest thing you can do to a human is to tarnish their reputation in front of others just to make yourself look good. ~ Sijdah Hussain

I think oysters are more beautiful than any religion,' he resumed presently. 'They not only forgive our unkindness to them; they justify it, they incite us to go on being perfectly horrid to them. Once they arrive at the supper-table they seem to enter thoroughly into the spirit of the thing. There's nothing in Christianity or Buddhism that quite matches the sympathetic unselfishness of an oyster. ~ Saki

The sudden and uncalled for coldness with which you treated me just before I left last night, both surprised and deeply hurt me - surprised because I could not have believed that such sullen and inflexible obstinacy could exist in the breast of any girl in whose heart love had found place; and hurt me, because I feel for you more than I have ever professed and feel a slight from you more than I care to tell.

My object in writing to you is this: if hasty temper produces this strange behaviour, acknowledge it when I give you the opportunity - not once or twice, but again and again. If a feeling of you know not what - a capricious restlessness of you can't tell what, and a desire to tease, you don't know why, give rise to it - overcome it; it will never make you more amiable, I more fond or either of us, more happy. Depend upon it, whatever be the cause of your unkindness - whatever gives rise to these wayward fancies - that what you do not take the trouble to conceal from a Lover's eyes, will be frequently acted before those of a husband's.

I know as well, as if I were by your side at this moment, that your present impulse on reading this letter is one of anger - pride perhaps, or to use a word more current with your sex - 'spirit'. My dear girl, I have not the most remote intention of awakening any such feeling, and I implore you, not to entertain it for an instant.... I have written these few lines in haste, but not anger.... If you knew but half the ~ Charles Dickens

I felt the kind of desperation, I think, that cancels the possibility of empathy ... that makes you unkind. ~ Sue Miller

I couldn't but surmise that the devil, looking at the cruel wars that Christianity has occasioned, the persecutions, the tortures Christian has inflicted on Christian, the unkindness, the hypocracy, the intolerance, must consider the balance sheet with complacency. And when he remembers that it has laid upon mankind the bitter burden of the sense of sin that has darkened the beauty of the starry night and cast a baleful shadow on the passing plesures of a world to be enjoyed, he must chuckle as he murmurs: give the devil his due. ~ W. Somerset Maugham

One of the worst things in the world today, the unkindness of woman to woman. You ~ Agatha Christie

A small unkindness is a great offence. ~ Hannah More

There is no room for pride in any man. There is no room for unkindness. There is no room for wit at the expense of others. All men are born the same, and equal. As you saw to-day, so come the Captains and the Kings and the Tinkers and the Tailors. ~ Richard Llewellyn

O call not me to justify the wrong, That thy unkindness lays upon my heart, Wound me not with thine eye but with thy tongue, Use power with power, and slay me not by art, ... ~ William Shakespeare

Unkindness is quite a major sin. ~ John Rhys-Davies

Unkind people need your kindness the most. They advertise their pain. ~ Rick Warren

But still I was curious to know what sort of an explanation she would have given me - or would give now, if I pressed her for it - how much she would confess, and how she would endeavour to excuse herself. I longed to know what to despise, and what to admire in her; how much to pity, and how much to hate; - and, what was more, I would know. I would see her once more, and fairly satisfy myself in what light to regard her, before we parted. Lost to me she was, for ever, of course; but still I could not bear to think that we had parted, for the last time, with so much unkindness and misery on both sides. That last look of hers had sunk into my heart; I could not forget it. But what a fool I was! Had she not deceived me, injured me - blighted my happiness for life? 'Well, I'll see her, however,' was my concluding resolve, 'but not to-day: to-day and to-night she may think upon her sins, and be as miserable as she will: to-morrow I will see her once again, and know something more about her. The interview may be serviceable to her, or it may not. At any rate, it will give a breath of excitement to the life she has doomed to stagnation, and may calm with certainty some agitating thoughts. ~ Anne Bronte

Remorse is a terrible thing to bear, Pam, one of the worst of all punishments in this life. To wish undone something you have done, to wish you could look back on kindness to someone you love, instead of on unkindness - that is a very terrible thing. ~ Enid Blyton

Another useful point to bear in mind: What qualities has nature given us to counter that defect? As an antidote to unkindness it gave us kindness. And other qualities to balance other flaws. ~ Marcus Aurelius

Be kind to each other. It is better to commit faults with gentleness than to work miracles with unkindness. ~ Mother Teresa

My grandmother's unkindness, for instance, was the result of repressed grief over three deaths: her parents, before she was twelve, and her firstborn child. I don't recall ever seeing her smile. She was critical of everything and everyone. Table manners, posture, diction, wardrobe. My aunt, her mother's staunchest defender, often reminded us that my grandmother suffered from accumulated sorrow, bottled up since childhood and cloaked in intellect and intolerance as she grew older. She was never able to grieve fully or mourn the amassed losses, my aunt had said. If we repress our grief, over time, it's bound to harden the heart. ~ Nancy Cobb

One of my greatest struggles is, and has been for a long time, seeing unkindness on this planet. Unkindness and inconsideration. I try to help that by being more conscientious and helpful towards our fellow brothers and sisters. ~ Kelly LeBrock

Rilke wrote in one of my favourite books [Letters to a Young Poet], "Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love." It takes courage to live as our true selves; especially when doing so can be faced with such unkindness. But I believe the more we show of ourselves, the more we make space for positive change in the world. I feel so grateful I get to be a part of a series that is contributing to that change. ~ Elise Bauman

You don't think about all these colours when everything's going all right; you'd go mad if you did. You just think about the colour on the top. But those colours are there, all the same. All the quarrels, and the bits of unkindness. And every so often something happens to put a chip right through; and then you can't not think of them.' She looked up, and grew self-conscious; ~ Sarah Waters

The unkind words that we said and the unkind deeds that we did will haunt us one day! ~ Avijeet Das