Cruelty is the law pervading all nature and society; and we can’t get out of it if we would.
Meaning of the quote
In nature and in our society, cruelty is a common and unavoidable part of life. No matter how much we might wish to avoid it, cruelty is a rule that affects everything around us. This idea from the English novelist Thomas Hardy means that we can't escape from the cruelty that exists in the world, even if we really want to.
About Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy was an acclaimed English novelist and poet who lived during the Victorian era. He is known for his tragic novels that explored the struggles of rural people in Britain, and his poetry was highly respected by other writers. Despite being primarily a poet, Hardy first gained fame as a novelist before his poetry collections were published later in life.
More quotes from Thomas Hardy
A woman would rather visit her own grave than the place where she has been young and beautiful after she is aged and ugly.
English novelist and poet (1840-1928)
Patience, that blending of moral courage with physical timidity.
English novelist and poet (1840-1928)
Give the enemy not only a road for flight, but also a means of defending it.
English novelist and poet (1840-1928)
And yet to every bad there is a worse.
English novelist and poet (1840-1928)
There are accents in the eye which are not on the tongue, and more tales come from pale lips than can enter an ear. It is both the grandeur and the pain of the remoter moods that they avoid the pathway of sound.
English novelist and poet (1840-1928)
I was court-martial in my absence, and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence.
English novelist and poet (1840-1928)
Like the British Constitution, she owes her success in practice to her inconsistencies in principle.
English novelist and poet (1840-1928)
My opinion is that a poet should express the emotion of all the ages and the thought of his own.
English novelist and poet (1840-1928)
Everybody is so talented nowadays that the only people I care to honor as deserving real distinction are those who remain in obscurity.
English novelist and poet (1840-1928)
Cruelty is the law pervading all nature and society; and we can’t get out of it if we would.
English novelist and poet (1840-1928)
You was a good man, and did good things.
English novelist and poet (1840-1928)
Poetry is emotion put into measure. The emotion must come by nature, but the measure can be acquired by art.
English novelist and poet (1840-1928)
A resolution to avoid an evil is seldom framed till the evil is so far advanced as to make avoidance impossible.
English novelist and poet (1840-1928)
The main object of religion is not to get a man into heaven, but to get heaven into him.
English novelist and poet (1840-1928)
If Galileo had said in verse that the world moved, the inquisition might have let him alone.
English novelist and poet (1840-1928)
The sudden disappointment of a hope leaves a scar which the ultimate fulfillment of that hope never entirely removes.
English novelist and poet (1840-1928)
A lover without indiscretion is no lover at all.
English novelist and poet (1840-1928)
You can do anything with bayonets except sit on them.
English novelist and poet (1840-1928)
The sky was clear – remarkably clear – and the twinkling of all the stars seemed to be but throbs of one body, timed by a common pulse.
English novelist and poet (1840-1928)
It is difficult for a woman to define her feelings in language which is chiefly made by men to express theirs.
English novelist and poet (1840-1928)
Of course poets have morals and manners of their own, and custom is no argument with them.
English novelist and poet (1840-1928)
That man’s silence is wonderful to listen to.
English novelist and poet (1840-1928)
There is a condition worse than blindness, and that is, seeing something that isn’t there.
English novelist and poet (1840-1928)
If way to the better there be, it exacts a full look at the worst.
English novelist and poet (1840-1928)
Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion.
English novelist and poet (1840-1928)
My argument is that War makes rattling good history; but Peace is poor reading.
English novelist and poet (1840-1928)
Do not do an immoral thing for moral reasons.
English novelist and poet (1840-1928)
The value of old age depends upon the person who reaches it. To some men of early performance it is useless. To others, who are late to develop, it just enables them to finish the job.
English novelist and poet (1840-1928)
Fear is the mother of foresight.
English novelist and poet (1840-1928)
Some folk want their luck buttered.
English novelist and poet (1840-1928)
Dialect words are those terrible marks of the beast to the truly genteel.
English novelist and poet (1840-1928)
The offhand decision of some commonplace mind high in office at a critical moment influences the course of events for a hundred years.
English novelist and poet (1840-1928)
Yes; quaint and curious war is! You shoot a fellow down you’d treat if met where any bar is, or help to half-a-crown.
English novelist and poet (1840-1928)
No one can read with profit that which he cannot learn to read with pleasure.
English novelist and poet (1840-1928)
Aspect are within us, and who seems most kingly is king.
English novelist and poet (1840-1928)
I am the family face; flesh perishes, I live on.
English novelist and poet (1840-1928)
The resolution to avoid an evil is seldom framed till the evil is so far advanced as to make avoidance impossible.
English novelist and poet (1840-1928)
Time changes everything except something within us which is always surprised by change.
English novelist and poet (1840-1928)