I will follow my logic, no matter where it goes, after it has consulted with my heart. If you ever come to a conclusion without calling the heart in, you will come to a bad conclusion.
Robert Green IngersollRead
Cruelty hardens and degrades, kindness reforms and ennobles.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Kindness has the power to uplift and improve behavior, while cruelty leads to a decline in character.
This quote by Robert Green Ingersoll emphasizes the transformative power of kindness in contrast to the destructive nature of cruelty. It suggests that acts of kindness can refine and elevate a person's character, leading to personal growth and positive change, while cruelty can lead to a hardening of the heart and a degradation of moral fiber.
Themes
KindnessCrueltyTransformationCharacterBehavior
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about building a compassionate community, one might quote this to emphasize the importance of kindness over cruelty.
More from Robert Green Ingersoll
All quotes βIf the guardians of society, the protectors of 'young persons,' could have had their way, we should have known nothing of Byron or Shelley. The voices that thrill the world would now be silent.
Robert Green IngersollRead
The religion that has to be supported by law is without value, not only, but a fraud and a curse. The religious argument that has to be supported by a musket is hardly worth making.
Robert Green IngersollRead
There is no slavery but ignorance.
Robert Green IngersollRead
In all ages the people have honored those who dishonored them. They have worshiped their destroyers; they have canonized the most gigantic liars, and buried the great thieves in marble and gold. Under the loftiest monuments sleeps the dust of murder.
Robert Green IngersollRead
I believe that there is something far nobler than loyalty to any particular man. Loyalty to the truth as we perceive it - loyalty to our duty as we know it - loyalty to the ideals of our brain and heart - is, to my mind, far greater and far nobler than loyalty to the life of any particular man or God. . . .
Robert Green IngersollRead
Similar quotes
I cannot help thinking that the menace of Hell makes as many devils as the severe penal codes of inhuman humanity make villains.
Lord ByronRead
We can be blind to the obvious, and we are also blind to our blindness.
Daniel KahnemanRead
There can be no compromise with war; it cannot be reformed or controlled; cannot be disciplined into decency or codified into common sense.
Jeannette RankinRead
Death is given in a kiss; the dearest kindnesses are fatal; and into this life, where one thing preys upon another, the child too often makes its entrance from the mother's corpse.
Robert Louis StevensonRead
It seemed to me that all things were possible on the island, all tyrannies and cruelties, though in small; and if, in despite of what was possible, we lived at peace with another, surely this was proof that certain laws unknown to us held sway, or else that we had been following the promptings of our hearts all this time, and our hearts had not betrayed us.
J. M. CoetzeeRead
But knowledge does not protect one. Life is contemptuous of knowledge; it forces it to sit in the anterooms, to wait outside. Passion, energy, lies: these are what life admires. Still, anything can be endured if all humanity is watching. The martyrs prove it. We live in the attention of others. We turn to it as flowers to the sun.
James SalterRead