Cruelty is indifference to suffering, and even pleasure in inflicting it. If this habit is supported by a legal or social framework, then it receives the name of perversion. Sadism can also be related to this form of action or concept.
Cruel ways of inflicting suffering may involve violence, but affirmative violence is not necessary for an act to be cruel. For example, if a person is drowning and begging for help, and another person is able to help, but merely watches with disinterest or perhaps mischievous amusement, that person is being cruel — rather than violent.
Read more about Cruelty: Usage in Law
Famous quotes containing the word cruelty:
“It is cruelty to children to keep five-year-olds sitting still, gazing into vacancy even for one hour at a time. We have little idea of the torture we thus inflict.”
—Ellen Henrietta Swallow Richards (1842–1911)
“There is nothing so desperately monotonous as the sea, and I no longer wonder at the cruelty of pirates.”
—James Russell Lowell (1819–1891)
“If Americans could understand what a painful, searing experience it is when Negro children first begin to realize that the mere color of their skin is to be the source of a lifelong discrimination, it might do more to end our cruelty toward the Negro than all the preaching on justice and equality.”
—Agnes E. Meyer (1887–1970)