Top 97 Life Is Cruel Quotes
#1. It's not just that life is cruel, but that in the very process of our birth we submit to life's cruelty
Shashi Deshpande
#2. Life is cruel enough without unnecessary brutality. Fight it.
John Knight
#3. Life is cruel. Why should the afterlife be any different? I offer you a choice. Join my crew ... and postpone the judgment. One hundred years before the mast. Will ye serve?
Davy Jones
#6. The clown knows that life is cruel. The ancient jester's motley coloured costume turned his usually melancholy expression in to a joke. The clown is used to loss. Loss is his prologue.
John Berger
#7. Life is cruel and unfair, my friends, and that is fact.
Stephan Jenkins
#8. Sooner or later I will be faced with the fact that the world is helpless to meet my needs. And at that point, I will be left with two conclusions; that life is cruel or God is real.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
#9. Life is cruel and we do terrible things to each other.
Barbara Pym
#10. Life is cruel. Love is a joke. And not even death is final.
Corinne Michaels
#11. Life is a cruel, horrible joke and I am the punch line.
Carrie Fisher
#12. Time is cruel like life. It slows down so that you can truly experience the worst moments of it. Only if you make it through them do you get to say 'It all happened so fast.
J.A. Redmerski
#13. The anxiety that has followed me through my life like a bad friend had reappeared with a vengeance and taken a brand-new form ... I didn't know why this was happening. The cruel reality of anxiety is that you never quite do.
Lena Dunham
#14. But it is the repetition, from all walks of life, that slowly destroys, turns the looking-glass into a mirror, distorting or true, both cruel.
Christine Brooke-Rose
#15. I've always deplored bad heterosexual values that dictate the minute a marriage is over the former partners no longer speak to each other; only straights could be so cruel and inhuman as to reject totally the person with whom they've shared their life for 20 or 30 years.
Edmund White
#16. Reality is a cruel and unintuitive place with frustrating gameplay mechanics.
(Press X to thanklessly toil your life away)
Yahtzee Croshaw
#17. After a good roll in the hay, when he's all peaceful and serene and he hasn't a worry or a care in the world, and the euphoric calm of release is drifting through his cerebrum, that's when you broadside him with the cold cruel fact that his life as he knows it is over!
Benjamin R. Smith
#18. In the country one sees only nature's fair works, and one's soul is not saddened by the cruel struggle for mere existence that goes on in the crowded city.
Helen Keller
#19. For the crown of our life as it closes Is darkness, the fruit thereof dust; No thorns go as deep as a rose's, And love is more cruel than lust.
Algernon Charles Swinburne
#20. Her tranquillity is their astonishment. For that they come, to be amazed again that such peace is there: all they have heard, and still hear now, does not record it. Calamity shaped a life when, long ago, chance was so cruel.
William Trevor
#21. What I mean is, things like that happen. They may seem might cruel and unfair, but that's how life is a part of the time. But that isn't the only way life is. A part of the time, it's mighty good. And a man can't afford to waste all the good part, worrying about the bad parts. That makes it all bad
Fred Gipson
#22. Self-criticism, cruel, unsparing criticism that goes to the very root of the evil, is life and breath for the proletarian movement.
Rosa Luxemburg
#23. Is cruelty a moral judgment if it is fundamental to forms of life? Who is man to say that the workings of nature, and therefore of the divine plan of which he himself is part, are cruel?
Charles Lindbergh
#24. Life is such an effort, Child. It's a war that is renewed each day, and its moments of joy are brief parentheses for which you pay a cruel price.
Oriana Fallaci
#25. Love is hard, harder than steel and thrice as cruel. It is inexorable as the tides, and life and death alike follow in its wake.
Jacqueline Carey
#26. It is a cruel folly to offer up to ostentation so many lives of creatures, as to make up the state of our treats.
William Penn
#27. Life is a cruel teacher. It punishes you first, and then gives you the lesson.
Robert T. Kiyosaki
#28. This world is a vaporous jest at best, Tossed off by the gods in laughter, And a cruel attempt at wit were it, If nothing better came after.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
#29. Humankind has turned to world into a cruel and inhospitable place. The thing that makes it all bearable is the potential for loving companionship.
Christopher Earle
#30. A child's hope is that your father comes riding in on that white stallion and saves them. You can't make somebody love you the way you want them to love you, it's not a Leave it to Beaver type world. This isn't television. Life's a lot more cruel than that.
Jake Roberts
#31. A fool is a man who believes glory can be found at the tip of a sword instead of on the tip of his tongue. That is life's cruel trick.
Natalia Jaster
#32. I know that war is very cruel and that life is harder when you aren't able to live in the place you called home.
Madeleine Albright
#33. Life is capricious and cruel and totally fucking random and there is no hope of finding meaning in a nightmare.
Hugh Howey
#34. By this age, there is almost everything you need in your life, but it isn't free, you must fight to snatch it from the cruel powerful hands that withhold it from you.
Bangambiki Habyarimana
#35. Delving into the past had unveiled a cruel lesson - that in the book of life it is perhaps best not to turn back pages; it was a path on which, whatever direction we took, we'd never be able to choose our own destiny.
Carlos Ruiz Zafon
#36. No, you listen! All my life, you've told me that the world is a dark, cruel place. But now I see that the only thing dark and cruel about it is people like you!
Salvatore Quasimodo
#37. Life is so long, and too hard, and then it ends so cruel and sudden!
Margo Lanagan
#38. Life is a cruel teacher. She loves to give you the test first and the lesson later.
Daymond John
#39. You stop pretending life is such fin or makes sense. It's often messy and cruel and dull, and we do the best we can. It's unfair, and jerks seem to win. But you fall in love with a few people.
Anne Lamott
#40. Life is glorious, but it can be counted on to be cruel.
Noah Gordon
#41. The whole process of life is a process of deterioration in which everything - and this is the most cruel law - continually gets worse.
Thomas Bernhard
#42. There are worse things in life to be than fat, and one of them is ignorant. Another is prejudiced. Another is deliberately cruel.
Laura Wiess
#43. Time is a cruel thief to rob us of our former selves. We lose as much to life as we do to death.
Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey
#44. Man is subject to innumerable pains and sorrows by the very condition of humanity, and yet, as if nature had not sown evils enough in life, we are continually adding grief to grief and aggravating the common calamity by our cruel treatment of one another.
Joseph Addison
#45. Life is hard and unfair. It is cruel and heartless, painful, trying, disappointing, unapologetic, and frequently downright awful. But that's not important. What's important is that through it all you learn how much you need your Heavenly Father and how much your friends need you.
Richelle E. Goodrich
#46. Of course, being angry is pointless. Unproductive. They don't understand yet. That they are all waiting for that one phone call that will change everything. That every one of them will feel like me eventually. Because someone they love will die. It's one of life's cruel certainties.
Cynthia Hand
#47. your ego is nothing but a mean and cruel deceptive little freak living inside your head that will never bring joy and happiness to your life. What that ego will bring is frustration, depression, manipulation, and fear.
Tony Horton
#48. The love we seek overrules human nature. It has a wildness in it and a glory that we want more than life itself. Love never counts the cost, to itself or others, and nothing is as cruel as love. There is no love that does not pierce the hands and feet.
Jeanette Winterson
#49. Atrocity is truly emperor; All things that thrive are slaves of cruel Creation.
John Updike
#50. I may be someone who was always destined to spend my life wandering aimlessly. I can't settle down. The cruel part is, I want to settle down and the world won't let me. So what choice do I have but to become a fugitive?
Soseki Natsume
#51. The cruel part is that, to let the play live, you have to surrender control and let your characters go. You have to let them stumble, fall into walls and be mute, let them drift and be lost. If you hold the reins too tight, they won't spring to life.
Tina Howe
#52. Mike's eyes narrowed shrewdly. "Don't kid yourself, Bella. The guy's head over heels for you." "I know," I sighed. "Life is complicated." "And girls are cruel," Mike said under his breath.
Stephenie Meyer
#53. Mere existence is already the result of incredible luck. Such was the case on Earth in the past, and such has always been the case in this cruel universe. But at some point, humanity began to develop the illusion that they're entitled to life, that life can be taken for granted.
Liu Cixin
#54. It's cruel to give hope where none should be. It only turns into disappointment, resentment, rage -- all the things that make this life more difficult than it already is.
Victoria Aveyard
#55. Fateful encounters with a cruel world reveal our character. No human is immune from heartbreaking loss. Regardless of our socioeconomic status, eventually everybody shall suffer a grievous personal loss, a body blow that inflicts pain of inexpressible magnitude.
Kilroy J. Oldster
#56. Forgiveness is an embrace, across all barriers, against all odds, in defiance of all that is mean and petty and vindictive and cruel in this life.
Kent Nerburn
#57. I always thought death was cruel, a silent destroyer of breath, of hope, of life. Now I understand it is physical death, the perception of it, the fear of it, which often saves us; for death marks the end of our flesh causing us to question the future of what we are.
Stefanie Schneider
#58. Life offers a cruel choice: you can be right or happy. Not both. This is true regardless of whom you may be involved with, but it is especially true if there is an emotional vampire in your life.
Albert J. Bernstein
#59. Just imagine that the purpose of life is happinesss only-
then life becomes a cruel and senseless thing.You have to embrace what the wisdom of humanity,your intellect and your heart tell you: that the meaning of life is to serve the force that sent you into the world.Then life becomes a joy
Leo Tolstoy
#60. Religion is a drug, and to take drugs is degrading,' he said. 'You must learn to look life in the face. Throw away your cowardly drugs, and see the truth, the ugly, cruel, ungodly truth, as it really is.
Anna Kavan
#61. As cruel as life might be at times, if you throw in the towel, which is what everyone will expect, then nothing good will happen and your life will fall apart. Be better than that!
Bill Courtney
#62. Bitter the day of birth, for death is its companion. Yet, though life be cold and cruel, we are not without a last consolation. For to die in one world is to be born into another. Let all men hear and remember!
Stephen R. Lawhead
#63. Military life is hard, even cruel - especially for the kids.
Tucker Elliot
#64. We never love a person after judging them because that's not love then, But today's life lesson is to judge a person before falling in love with that person, It's hard to trust anyone in this cruel world where all are determined to hurt you by any mean.
Debolina Bhawal
#65. Children - their untroubled, idyllic vision of the future is almost always shattered. Sooner or later they learn what all youth must - that life is the cruel fate that awaits them while they make plans for a tomorrow that will never be.
Andrew Levkoff
#66. Life is unjust, people can be cruel, and yet if you harden your heart, you will lose what little love there is in this world.
Rita Mae Brown
#67. Suddenly, someone who was at the center of your life is gone, excised as quickly as an apple is cored, a sharp spike driven down the center of your world, then a cruel flick of the wrist and the almost surgical extraction of your very heart.
Lisa Scottoline
#68. You can't expect to draw people into your life who are kind, confident, and generous if you're thinking and acting in cruel, weak, and selfish ways. You must be what it is that you're seeking- that is, you need to put forth what you want to attract.
Wayne Dyer
#69. Your belief in God is merely an escape from your monotonous, stupid and cruel life.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
#70. And that's when she put her book down. And looked at me. And said it: Life isn't fair, Bill. we tell our children that it is, but it's a terrible thing to do. It's not only a lie, it's a cruel lie. Life is not fair, and it never has been, and it's never going to be.
William Goldman
#71. You said 'God is cruel' the way a person who's lived his whole life on Tahiti might say 'Snow is cold'. You knew, but you didn't understand." He stepped close to David and put his palms on the boy's cold cheeks. "Do you know how cruel your God can be, David. How fantastically cruel?
Stephen King
#72. Certainly it is wrong to be cruel to animals and the destruction of a whole species can be a great evil. The capacity for feelings of pleasure and pain and for the form of life of which animals are capable clearly impose duties of compassion and humanity in their case.
John Rawls
#73. A journalist marries the news, Seymour. She's capricious, cruel, and jealous. She demands you follow her to wherever on Earth life is cheapest, where she'll stay a day or two, then jet off. You, your safety, your family are nothing,
David Mitchell
#74. I know life is hard, I think everyone knows that in their hearts, but why dos it have to be cruel, as well? Why does it have to bite?
Stephen King
#75. Anything that smiles often needs to be reminded that the world is a cruel, dark place.
Matthew Inman
#76. Fate is cruel but maybe not random. Nature (meaning Death) always wins but that doesn't mean we have to bow and gravel to it.
Donna Tartt
#78. ...I'm ANGRY. I know life is hard, I think EVERYONE knows that in their hearts, but why does it have to be cruel, as well? Why does it have to BITE?
Why are there no second choices?
Stephen King
#79. People are constantly clamoring for the joy of life. As for me, I find the joy of life in the hard and cruel battle of life - to learn something is a joy to me.
August Strindberg
#80. It's about life, and how cruel it can sometimes be.
How unfair life is.
All of us have a hand in it.
We do what we have to do, take what we have to take, and sometimes we hurt people we swear we won't hurt, but we do, because life makes us.
J.M. Darhower
#81. And Heyst, the son, read:
Of the stratagems of life the most cruel is the consolation of love - the most subtle, too; for the desire is the bed of dreams.
Joseph Conrad
#82. The Earth is beautiful, and bright, and kindly, but that is not all. The Earth is also terrible, and dark, and cruel. The rabbit shrieks dying in the green meadows. The mountains clench their great hands full of hidden fire. There are sharks in the sea, and there is cruelty in men's eyes.
Ursula K. Le Guin
#84. It's difficult to admit to ourselves that we suffer. We feel humiliated, like we should have been able to control our pain. If someone else is suffering, we like to tuck them away, out of sight. It's a cruel, cruel conditioning. There is no controlling the unfolding of life.
Sharon Salzberg
#85. What is life, except an ongoing instinct for survival? Nature uses that instinct to make us perform; otherwise we would all relax, and the species would disappear. Nature is a cruel green mother. The survival instinct is a goad, not a privilege.
Piers Anthony
#86. What if the actual sin was that despite the fact of knowing how cruel and unfair this world is; we still bring children to life?
Sandra Chami Kassis
#87. Life is long, and sometimes cruel. Sometimes victims are needed. Someone has to take on that role. And human bodies are fragile, easily damaged. Cut them, and they bleed.
Haruki Murakami
#88. Ah Fortune, what god is more cruel to us than thou! How thou delightest ever to make sport of human life!
Horace
#89. the implied Shakespeare is thoroughly engaged with life, and he does not conceal his judgment on the selfish, the foolish, and the cruel.
Wayne C. Booth
#90. Death has no need to be cruel, taking people's lives is more than enough.
Jose Saramago
#91. And that's why people read comics, to get away from the way life works, which is quite cruel and unheroic and ends in death.
Grant Morrison
#92. Life - life - how cruel it is! Nothing but tears and sorrow and despair! Not a moment of happiness! Not a moment of joy.
Aimee Dostoyevsky
#93. Life, that can shower you with so much splendour, is unremittingly cruel to those who have given up.
Stephen Fry
#94. Don't build walls and shut people out of your life. To act as if another does not exist is a mean and cruel weapon
Joyce Meyer
#95. Once you have perceived that life is very cruel, the only response is to live with as much humanity, humour and freedom as you can.
Sarah Kane
#96. I believe that life is a game, life is a cruel joke and that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it." She
Neil Gaiman
#97. If to be truthful is to be cruel, then lying must surely be an act of kindness. And so, kindness is a lie.
Wataru Watari
