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Inhumanity   /ɪnhjumˈænəti/   Listen
Inhumanity

noun
(pl. inhumanities)
1.
The quality of lacking compassion or consideration for others.  Synonym: inhumaneness.
2.
An act of atrocious cruelty.  Synonym: atrocity.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Inhumanity" Quotes from Famous Books



... the remains of the friend of the poor, Inside of his palace without any door. By man's inhumanity he was oft made to flit, But now he's at home, where he'll bide for a bit. He had a large heart that beat in his breast; Without some sensation he never could rest; If he saw a mean action he'd cry like a calf; If he saw a kind deed he'd ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End

... slave period, North Carolina could not be classed with South Carolina, Georgia, and other far Southern States in cruelty and inhumanity to its slave population; and in Wilmington and vicinity, the pillage of a victorious army, and the Reconstruction period were borne with resignation. Former master and freedman vied with each other in bringing order out of chaos, ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton

... strong room itself, by coupling the living with the dead; and have made a practice of locking up debtors who displeased them in the yard with human carcasses. One particular instance of this sort of inhumanity, was of a person whom the keepers confined in that part of the lower yard which was then separated from the rest, whilst two dead bodies had lain there four days; yet was he kept there with them six days longer; in which time the vermin devoured the flesh from the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 454 - Volume 18, New Series, September 11, 1852 • Various

... curses, like a beaten dog. But even then I was not quit, for the vixen threw up her window, and, leaning forth, continued to revile me as I went up the wynd; the free-traders, coming to the tavern door, joined in the mockery, and one had even the inhumanity to set upon me a very savage small dog, which bit me in the ankle. This was a strong lesson, had I required one, to avoid ill company; and I rode home in much pain from the bite, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson

... it. And, among the growing multitudes in this broad land of ours, none know this better than ten millions of Afro-Americans who but for its strong arm of power might still be suffering from "Man's inhumanity to man." ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various

... massacre of Glencoe, the nameless atrocities of the Duke of Alva in the Netherlands, the murders of St. Bartholomew's day, the unspeakable agonies of the South of France under the demoniac rule of revolution! All history, black with crime and red with blood, is but an awful commentary upon "man's inhumanity to man," and it teaches us that there is nothing exceptional in the Indian's ferocity and vindictiveness, and that the alleged reasons for his extermination would, at one time or another, have applied with equal force to the ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... it even if they did know—who starve patiently, suffer uncomplainingly, and die resignedly—these are as difficult to meet with as diamonds in a coal mine. As for hospitals, do I not know how many of them pander to the barbarous inhumanity of vivisection!—and have I not experienced to the utmost dregs of bitterness, the melting of cash through the hands of secretaries and under-secretaries, and general Committee-ism, and Red Tape-ism, while every hundred thousand pounds bestowed on these necessary institutions turns out in the end ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli

... a passion for the wild, and seems like an Anglo-Saxon reversion to the type of the Red Indian. The most distinctive note in Thoreau is his inhumanity. Emerson spoke of him as a "perfect piece of stoicism." "Man," said Thoreau, "is only the point on which I stand." He strove to realize the objective life of nature—nature in its aloofness from man; to identify himself, with the moose and the mountain. He listened, with his ear ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers

... of forgiveness or the hope of reconciliation. The historians of the times adopt the vulgar suspicion, that Maurice conspired to destroy the troops whom he had labored to reform; the misconduct and favor of Commentiolus are imputed to this malevolent design; and every age must condemn the inhumanity of avarice [42] of a prince, who, by the trifling ransom of six thousand pieces of gold, might have prevented the massacre of twelve thousand prisoners in the hands of the chagan. In the just fervor ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon

... fire, and thus were left to be roasted alive. Having used these and other cruelties with the white men, they began to practise the same with the negroes, their slaves, who were treated with no less inhumanity than their masters. ...
— The Pirates of Panama • A. O. (Alexandre Olivier) Exquemelin

... a tree enjoying the cool outdoor breezes until the long psalm was ended, escaping thus not only the heat but the singing; and when we consider the quantity and quality of both, and that he condemned his good people to an extra amount of each, it seems a piece of clerical inhumanity that would be hard to equal. Surely this selfish Taunton sybarite was the prosaic ideal ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle

... this matter give thanks to Stephen that it has now happened through his unkindness [inhumanity] that we receive proof of your faith ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.

... yet lingers upon this continent a forest of moral evil more formidable, a barrier denser and darker, a Dismal Swamp of inhumanity, a barbarism upon the soil, before which civilization has thus far been compelled to pause,—happy, if it could even check its spread. Checked at last, there comes from it a cry as if the light of day had turned ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various

... think it advisable to allow the people to remain long enough to embark the guns, there being a large body of troops in the vicinity. A great many small vessels are in the bay, and hauled up on the beach. None of them having cargoes of any value, I conceive it an act of inhumanity to deprive the poorer inhabitants of the means of gaining their livelihood, and shall not molest them. On inspecting the brig, as she had only the lower rigging overhead, and was not in a state of forwardness, I found it impracticable to bring her away, and therefore ...
— The Surrender of Napoleon • Sir Frederick Lewis Maitland

... Mr. Darcy so bad as this—though I have never liked him. I had not thought so very ill of him. I had supposed him to be despising his fellow-creatures in general, but did not suspect him of descending to such malicious revenge, such injustice, such inhumanity as this." ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... African's fastnesses. His arrows send no telltale reverberations to the distant clearing. Many a wretch in his native wilderness has Bras-Coupe himself, in palmier days, driven to just such an existence, to escape the chains and horrors of the barracoons; therefore not a whit broods he over man's inhumanity, but, taking the affair as a matter of course, casts about him ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable

... "Cruel! Inhumanity!" cried Benjamin, who entertained the singular idea that it was murder to take the life of any harmless creature; and for this reason he ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer

... prisoners. They behaved, he wrote, "as perfect gentlemen towards the prisoners." "The testimony of a responsible writer of this kind," says Dr. Spaight, "is more valuable than the catch-penny stories of British inhumanity which flooded the Press of Europe at the time of the war." "One is surprised to find such a writer as M. Arthur Desjardins lending his authority to back the uninformed newspaper abuse, and ascribing the brutality of the British Army (which he presumes) to the ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton

... everywhere, the hospital meant almost certain death; for they assumed—and they had heard again and again accusations which warranted it—that the public hospital doctors and nurses treated their patients with neglect always, with downright inhumanity often. Not a day passed without their hearing some story of hospital outrage upon poverty, without their seeing someone—usually some child—who was paying a heavy penalty for having ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips

... general—who rule the fate of mankind; but with this difference, that in them it is partial and limited, and in her universal. In them, it bears relation to their trade or mission; in her, it is a peculiarity of her general nature. She is accused of inhumanity; of sporting with the feelings of those about her, and rending, when they interfere with her plans, the strings of the heart as ruthlessly as if they were fiddlestrings. But all that is nonsense. She does not, it is true, ignore the existence ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 459 - Volume 18, New Series, October 16, 1852 • Various

... fatal, on people whom poverty confides to you, trusting and powerless; to you, their only hope; to you, who will only answer for their life to God—do you know that this is to push the love of science to inhumanity, sir? How! the poorer classes already people the workshops, the field, the army; in this world they only know misery and privations; and when, at the end of their sufferings and fatigues, they fall exhausted—half-dead—sickness even does ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue

... woman's idea of maternal love, fidelity, and duty. The shameful accounts we read, every week in the Christian year, my lords and gentlemen and honourable boards, the infamous records of small official inhumanity, do not pass by the people as they pass by us. And hence these irrational, blind, and obstinate prejudices, so astonishing to our magnificence, and having no more reason in them—God save the Queen and ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens

... ungrateful as addressed to Mrs. Payson personally. At the third attempt, he wrote becomingly as well as briefly. "Sally has passed the night here, as my guest. She was suffering from severe fatigue; it would have been an act of downright inhumanity to send her away. I regret your decision, but of course I submit to it. You once said, you believed implicitly in the purity of my motives. Do me the justice, however you may blame my conduct, ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins

... out. And so to-day, in the library of Harvard University and in a very few other places, there are to be found copies of Eliot's Bible; sealed books, which no man can read; a sad evidence of "Man's inhumanity ...
— On the Indian Trail - Stories of Missionary Work among Cree and Salteaux Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young

... copper-coloured Indians was accompanied by the same acts of inhumanity as that which characterizes the traffic in African negroes; it was attended also by the same result, that of rendering both the conquerors and the conquered more ferocious. Thence wars became more frequent among the natives; prisoners were dragged from the inland ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt

... hostile disposition, they often found themselves in a very precarious situation. The blacks swarmed on the runs, killing the sheep, and stealing the property of the squatters, who had many annoyances to suffer and injuries to guard against. But their retaliation oftentimes exhibited a ferocity and inhumanity ...
— History of Australia and New Zealand - From 1606 to 1890 • Alexander Sutherland

... know that there was something inhuman about these Hans. And I had many months of intimate contact with them, and with their Emperor in America. I can vouch for the fact that even in his most friendly and human moments, there was an inhumanity, or perhaps "unhumanity" about him that aroused in me that urge ...
— The Airlords of Han • Philip Francis Nowlan

... opprobrious epithets with which some of our philosophers and gloomy sectarians have branded our nature—the principle of universal selfishness, the proneness to all evil, they have given us—still, the detestation in which inhumanity to the distressed, or insolence to the fallen, are held by all mankind, shows that they are not natives of the human heart. Even the unhappy partner of our kind who is undone, the bitter consequence of his follies or his crimes—who but sympathises ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... and the inhumanity of the Spaniards," he answered. "They made me a slave of the crew, at whose every beck and call I was from the beginning of the morning watch until four bells in the first watch; and when my day's work was over they used to lock ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood

... official murderers who ruled in Ireland in those times were intensely religious, setting to their own class a most edifying example of piety. Thus, from the first, Protestantism was presented to the Irish in close connexion with brutal inhumanity and remorseless cruelty. Essex, when dying, was described by the bystanders as acting 'more like a divine preacher or heavenly prophet than a man.' His opinion of the religious character of his countrymen was most unfavourable. 'The Gospel had been preached ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin

... through the whole case by morning light; and the compassionate man appealed to common sense, to stamp and pass his delectable sophistries; as, that it was his intense humaneness, which exposed him to an accusation of inhumanity; his prayer for the truly best to happen, which anticipated Mrs. Burman's expiry. They were simple sophistries, fabricated to suit his needs, readily taking and bearing the imprimatur of common sense. They refreshed him, as a chemical scent a ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... solitary instance of the kind I should hardly indulge in a passing remark. But I have reason to believe that such cases, caused by the inhumanity or culpable neglect of American consuls in foreign ports, are not uncommon. If such proceedings take place under the eye and authority and apparent sanction of a man of high character and acknowledged worth, what may we not expect from consuls of a different character; from men ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper

... were learning the desert when you were attending a fashionable dancing school. Why, you damned lily- fingered tenderfoot, you couldn't find your way five hundred yards in this country without a guide or a compass. Now, sir, I'm running this outfit and if you have any protests against my cowardly inhumanity I advise you to smother them in your manly breast, or, by hell! I'll ship you out on the first wagon to-morrow morning and let you report to Greenfield that you were fired because you didn't know your work yourself and hadn't intelligence enough to ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright

... intricacies of the law, domestic and international, relating to migratory birds and beasts. To the present generation it seems amusing that Blaine defended his basic contention quite as much on the ground of the inhumanity of destroying the seals as of its economic wastefulness. Yet Blaine rallied Congress to his support, as well as a great part ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish

... with the filth and the slums and the greed and everything. I've been taking a course in sociology, and some of the things that Prof Davis has been telling us make you wonder why the world goes on at all. Some poet has a line somewhere about man's inhumanity to man, and I find myself thinking about that all the time. The world's rotten as hell, and I don't see how anything can be done about it. I don't think sometimes that it's worth living in. I can understand why people commit suicide." He spoke ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks

... that the inhumanity of the circumstances in the case now presses us on, but in the heat of even just indignation is this the best time to act, when action involves such momentous consequences and means untold loss of life and treasure? ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... nature. It was, no doubt, a great undertaking; but the findings of such a court must have been comforting to an anxious conscience! The result can be judged. Maryland made a slave-code, which, for cruelty and general inhumanity, has no equal in the South.[426] The Maryland laws of 1715 contained, in chapter forty-four, an act with one hundred and thirty-five sections relating to Negro slaves. A most rigorous pass-system was established. ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams

... the cause might be, a good expression.[110] Livingstone,—and a more unimpeachable authority cannot be quoted,—after speaking of a half-caste man on the Zambesi, described by the Portuguese as a rare monster of inhumanity, remarks, "It is unaccountable why half-castes, such as he, are so much more cruel than the Portuguese, but such is undoubtedly the case." An inhabitant remarked to Livingstone, "God made white men, and God made black men, but the Devil made half-castes."[111] When two races, ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin

... sincerity only added to her crime and to the scandalous mystery. Yet her manner awed some, while her silence held most back. The few who came to offer sympathy, with curiousness in their eyes and as much inhumanity as pity in their hearts, were turned back gently but firmly, more than once ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... standards of his own age, a {158} reasonable plea can also be made on Frontenac's behalf respecting the conduct of his wars. 'Man's inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn' in our own day no less than in the seventeenth century; while certain facts of recent memory are quite lurid enough to be placed in comparison with the border raids which, under Frontenac, were ...
— The Fighting Governor - A Chronicle of Frontenac • Charles W. Colby

... at least three hours gone. I saw him descend from a cab at the door, and almost immediately after I was shown again into his study, where the solemnity of his manner led me to augur the worst. For some time he had the inhumanity to read me a lecture as to the incredible silliness, "not to say immorality," of my behaviour. "I have the satisfaction in telling you my opinion, because it appears that you are going to get off scot-free," he continued, where, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... over, my head was for some time taken up in considering the nature of these wretched creatures, I mean the savages, and how it came to pass in the world, that the wise Governor of all things should give up any of his creatures to such inhumanity, nay, to something so much below even brutality itself, as to devour its own kind: but as this ended in some (at that time) fruitless speculations, it occurred to me to inquire, what part of the world these wretches ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner, Vol. 1 • Daniel Defoe

... break in upon her," it follows that the true interest of the spirit must ever be to treat the body—Well! as a corpse attached thereto, rather than as a living companion—nay, actually to promote its dissolution. In counterpoise to the inhumanity of this, presenting itself to the young reader as nothing less than a sin against nature, the very person of Cornelius was nothing less than a sanction of that reverent delight Marius had always had in the visible body of man. Such ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater

... ideas of dignity and moderation, there is a great deal of foul talk and brawling among the passers, and Athenian children have receptive eyes and ears. Yet on the other hand, there is a notable regard and reverence for childhood. With all its frequent callousness and inhumanity, Greek sentiment abhors any brutality to young children. Herodotus the historian tells of the falling of a roof, whereby one hundred and twenty school children perished, as being a frightful calamity,[*] although recounting cold-blooded ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis

... follow the fortunes of Biencourt and his companions whom we last saw near the smoking ruins of their homes on the banks of the Annapolis. We have now come to a strange chapter of Canadian history, which has its picturesque aspect as well as its episodes of meanness, cupidity, and inhumanity. As we look back to those early years of Acadian history, we see rival chiefs with their bands of retainers engaged in deadly feuds, and storming each other's fortified posts as though they were the castles of barons living in mediaeval times. We see savage Micmacs and Etchemins of Acadia, ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot

... ambition; love of gain Strikes like a pestilence from breast to breast; Riot, pride, perfidy, blue vapor's breath; And inhumanity is caught ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips

... act of positive inhumanity to leave the unfortunate preacher any longer to his solitude, without taking some note, however brief it may be, of his feelings and his sufferings. After consigning his packet (which, as we have seen, was not only received, but appreciated ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall

... virtue of starving that part of their nature. To believe literally and with a realizing sense of its meaning the creed of Calvin, would have been impossible without madness to any nature short of the incarnate inhumanity of a Jonathan Edwards. The aesthetic sense of humanity demands that the imagination shall be nourished; and the imagination is fed by receiving things as only ideally true. The Puritans were right in declaring that art was hostile ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates

... hurled excommunication against all who should carry on the traffic in brandy with the savages. "It would be very difficult," writes M. de Latour, "to realize to what an excess these barbarians are carried by drunkenness. There is no species of madness, of crime or inhumanity to which they do not descend. The savage, for a glass of brandy, will give even his clothes, his cabin, his wife, his children; a squaw when made drunk—and this is often done purposely—will abandon herself to the first comer. They will tear each other to pieces. If one enters a cabin whose ...
— The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval • A. Leblond de Brumath

... p. 219. It must be stated that the British in no way sought intentionally to use the Indians for the purpose of massacreing the whites. The instructions to Dickson declared that he "should restrain them by all the means in your power from acts of Cruelty and inhumanity". On March 16, 1813, Dickson reported to the military secretary at Quebec that he had taken steps to redeem the soldiers, women, and children of the ill-fated Fort Dearborn garrison, who were still captives.—Michigan ...
— Old Fort Snelling - 1819-1858 • Marcus L. Hansen

... if John and his people did not come in three days he would start without them. In vain did Richard prove to him beyond a doubt that if he did so the white men would be sold as slaves. The captain would not listen to him, only answering, "I can't help it; I shall wait no longer." Such inhumanity as this is fortunately very rare; and a wretch who could thus insult those not merely his equals, but so much his superiors, ought to be pilloried. At last, on the 24th November, after weathering a strong breeze which made the passage of the bar very rough and all but impossible, ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne

... then after it any of the romantic farces, such as Pickwick or even The Wrong Box, I do not think he will be disposed to erase or even to modify what I said at the beginning about the ingrained grimness and even inhumanity of Shaw's art. To take but one test: love, in an "extravaganza," may be light love or love in idleness, but it should be hearty and happy love if it is to add to the general hilarity. Such are the ludicrous but lucky ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton

... decay. When it attacks the heart the finer and better feelings wither and die; and on this decay of sympathy and kindness and generosity and justice there thrive and flourish meanness and heartlessness and cruelty and inhumanity. ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde

... New World their home and a heritage for their descendants. The English settlers might be driven back for a time; their cabins might be turned into ashes, and the tomahawk and scalping-knife leave dire evidence of savage vengeance and Gallic inhumanity. But the rally was as certain as the raid was sudden. A garrison might be massacred; a colony could not be exterminated, and the defeats of Braddock and Abercrombie only burned into English breasts the resolution to tear down forever on the American continent ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann

... were reckoned the seats of barbarism. Refinement, for the most part false, increases the desire to accumulate wealth; and, while theories of political economy are boastfully pleading for the practice, inhumanity pervades all our dealings in buying and selling. This selfishness wars against disinterested imagination in all directions, and, evils coming round in a circle, barbarism spreads in every quarter of our ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... simplicity, either spoke of what interested himself, or maintained an unaffected silence. The son turned in his head for some topic that should be quite safe, that would spare him fresh evidences either of my lord's inherent grossness or of the innocence of his inhumanity; treading gingerly the ways of intercourse, like a lady gathering up her skirts in a by-path. If he made a mistake, and my lord began to abound in matter of offence, Archie drew himself up, his brow ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Heaven' were starving and dying of hunger, as they believe that men without literal bread must die, there would not be so many dumb ones amongst them; and they would feel more distinctly than any of us feel now, the responsibility that is laid upon them, and the inhumanity of the sin. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... by contumely Cold inhumanity, Burning insanity, Into her rest. —Cross her hands humbly As if praying dumbly, Over her breast! Owning her weakness, Her evil behavior, And leaving, with meekness, Her sins to ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... not heard you bitter and contemptuous towards people because they are treacherous, cruel! How often have you talked of your love of nature, of our inhumanity towards lower creatures! ...
— A Kentucky Cardinal • James Lane Allen

... manufactured by the doughty doctor) may be gleaned from the following precis—Smollett's own—of Chapter XXXVIII: "I get up and crawl into a barn where I am in danger of perishing through the fear of the country people. Their inhumanity. I am succored by a reputed witch. Her story. Her advice. She recommends me as a valet to a single lady whose character she explains." This promises pretty fair reading: of course, we wish to read on and to learn more of that ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton

... empty-handed. [Loud cheers.] It is easy for those who neglect their own duties to suspect that others do the same. I know our paupers are not supported in luxury. We cannot afford to support them in luxury; but I wash my hands of all responsibility for inhumanity and inattention to their reasonable wants. The reverend gentleman himself knows, I think, whether any man ever came to me for assistance on behalf of any humane or religious object, and went away without aid, I cannot consent to be placed in a position ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland

... correlation is by no means evident to me. Surely the hard-working individual can find plenty of scope for his energies without needing, let us say, to beat his wife. Nor are the hard-working peoples of the earth especially notorious for their inhumanity. Thus the Eskimo, whose life is one long fight against the cold, has the warmest of hearts. Mr. Stefanson says of his newly discovered 'Blonde Eskimo,' a people still living in the stone age: 'They are the equals of the best of our own race in good breeding, kindness, and the substantial ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle

... guilty of wanton cruelty, and I wished my aim had miscarried, proud as I had just before been of having done execution at what looked to be an impracticably long range. Not improbably I tried to extenuate my inhumanity by the argument that if I had not killed it somebody else would have done so. Be this how it may, I could never bring myself to shoot another, though I had many a fair chance. All things considered, then, I am disposed to strike a balance in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various

... smaller, younger man I had hired as if they would take me by force from his vehicle to their own—and this for a climb so steep that I soon got out and walked rather than feel myself guilty of "man's inhumanity to man" by making a fellow being pull me. Fiercer yet was the competition in Hankow, where not even the brutal clubbing of the policeman was enough to keep the men in order. In wintry Newchwang I think I suffered almost as much as my rickshaw man did merely to see him wading through ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe

... and strength of body, excelling the ordinary rate, and wholly incapable of fatigue; making use, however, of these gifts of nature to no good or profitable purpose for mankind, but rejoicing and priding themselves in insolence, and taking the benefit of their superior strength in the exercise of inhumanity and cruelty, and in seizing, forcing, and committing all manner of outrages upon every thing that fell into their hands; all respect for others, all justice, they thought, all equity and humanity, though naturally lauded by common ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... result of dissipation, poverty of indolence, friendlessness of selfishness. How many of the miseries of our great cities, how many of the miseries of nations, result from criminal neglect and injustice! 'Man's inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn.' Ah! if all men were saying from the heart, 'Thy will be done,' how many of their griefs would be at an end! And it is true that sorrows are the consequences of sin inasmuch as suffering has been introduced by God into the world because ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren

... legislation not only of the slave States, but of the free States; and that had interposed grave difficulties in the way of such a step. The Big Springs Convention had framed the first Free State platform for Kansas, August 15, 1855, and this, with hard-hearted inhumanity, had avowed the purpose to drive out of Kansas the free blacks as well as the slaves. The same principle was also incorporated in the ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler

... ferment. There is also a talk here of Lord Stormont's recall. The stocks in England fall fast, and, on both sides, there is every appearance of an approaching war. Being informed, by the concurring reports of many who had escaped, that our people, prisoners in England, are treated with great inhumanity, we have written a letter of expostulation on that subject to Lord North, which is sent over by a person express, whom we have instructed to visit the prisoners, and, (under the directions of Mr Hartley) to relieve as much ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various

... let your groom gallop your hunter on the hard ground in autumn; and my last word shall be a petition on this subject to master as well as man—to deprecate a piece of inhumanity practised, indeed, as much by ladies as by gentlemen—the riding the horse fast on hard ground. I pray them to consider that horses do not die of old age, but that they are killed because they become crippled, and that he ...
— Hints on Horsemanship, to a Nephew and Niece - or, Common Sense and Common Errors in Common Riding • George Greenwood

... shore, for the sake of an immoderate premium, which they expected to receive, and which occasioned our being assailed in this violent manner. Our fellow-passengers were obliged to go on shore with these vociferous watermen, who had the impudence and inhumanity to charge them two livres each, for conveying them to the landing steps, a short distance of about fifty yards. Upon their landing, we were much pleased to observe that the people offered them neither violence nor insult. They were received with a sullen silence, and a lane was made for ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr

... preference for any of the eligible young men of her acquaintance; although always becomingly dressed, she was never guilty of any feminine foibles, which would have endeared her to her father. To him, such correctness savoured of inhumanity; much of the same feeling affected the girl's other relatives and friends, to the ultimate ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte

... and sees how completely he has been degraded by his unmanly weakness, the whole enormity of his guilt comes full upon his mind, and he acquires even dignity in the opinion of the beholder, from the solemn and emphatic manner in which he curses the folly and inhumanity of his conduct. But a further blow awaits him; and it is not till Pylades informs him of the death of Hermione, that the horrors of madness begin to seize on his mind. At first he remains motionless and thunderstruck with the dreadful issue of his enterprise; ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison

... and destructive to its victims. It has no geographical boundaries, but in every clime, this hideous monster of vice seeks its victims, with a relentless and inhuman ferocity. As one surveys the results of this evil in every land, one is led to cry "How long, O Lord, how long, before men's inhumanity to women shall cease, and the kingdoms of this world become ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various

... on Multitude seems merely inserted for the sake of buffeting unwarranted pretensions. "Distrust the judgment of the multitude in all matters of reasoning and philosophy; there its voice is the voice of malice, folly, inhumanity, irrationality, and prejudice. Distrust it again in things that suppose much knowledge or a fine taste. The multitude is ignorant and dulled. Distrust it in morality; it is not capable of strong and generous actions; ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley

... orator, but a man, than to reproach an adversary with a thing which if he denies by one single word, he who has reproached him cannot advance one step further? But I do not deny it; and in this very point I convict you not only of inhumanity but also of madness. For what expression is there in those letters which is not full of humanity and service and benevolence? and the whole of your charge amounts to this, that I do not express a bad opinion of you in those ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero

... it, it doesn't at all follow that they would not break that pledge at the first opportunity. In these days governments break promises as easily as eggshells. And there would be ample excuse for breaking the pledge to you—simply on the ground of inhumanity." ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli

... Isidore (Comment. in Deut.) enumerates nine daughters of covetousness; which are "lying, fraud, theft, perjury, greed of filthy lucre, false witnessing, violence, inhumanity, rapacity." Therefore the former reckoning ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... thousands of men in a battle-field is praised and honoured, because the former is perpetrated to promote the private interests, while the latter those of the public. If the former be bad, because of its cruelty, the latter must also be bad, because of its inhumanity. ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya

... in its arrogant heart. When you have got so far down you have had time to discover what that is which has put you so low. The day may be radiant, the sky just what you had hoped to find in Africa, and the people in the market-place a lively and chromatic jangle; but the shadow of what we call inhumanity (when we are trying to persuade ourselves that humanity is something very different) ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson

... following over in the evening, having to wait for the construction of a rickety pontoon. The people were very much frightened at the event of our entering their village, having formed the idea that the Yankees would extend them no mercy. They told us that they had heard much of Yankee inhumanity, and death was the most clement act they had expected—thus ...
— History of the Eighty-sixth Regiment, Illinois Volunteer Infantry, during its term of service • John R. Kinnear

... gnawed your fingers! I think it would have come to homicide before the evening—if it were only for the pleasure of seeing something red! And the masters of Dunure, it is to be noticed, were remarkable of old for inhumanity. One of these vaults where the snow had drifted was that "black voute" where "Mr. Alane Stewart, Commendatour of Crossraguel," endured his fiery trials. On the 1st and 7th of September 1570 (ill dates for Mr. Alan!), Gilbert, Earl of Cassilis, his chaplain, his ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... ladies, when we compared the use they made of money with that to which the two late possessors had appropriated it! While we were in doubt which most to blame, he who had heaped it up without comfort, in sordid inhumanity, or he who squandered it in the gratification of gayer vices. Equally strangers to beneficence, self-indulgence was their sole view; alike criminal, though not equally unfashionable, one endeavoured to starve, the other to ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott

... what befell. Perhaps he met John; and if so, avoided him. Perhaps he heard Peter deny the Lord with oaths, and congratulated himself that there was not much to choose between them. But for the most part his mind was absorbed in what was transpiring. He beheld the shameful injustice and inhumanity of the trial. Though he had kissed his Master's face, his soul winced from the blows and spittle that befell it. Perhaps he had entertained some lingering hope and expectation that when the worst came to the worst the ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer

... mere Berserkir fury or Lycanthropia coming over him in gusts and leaving him exhausted. It was steady and continuous. In his madness, if such we may call this inhumanity, there was method; he used it to the end of the consolidation of his tyranny. Yet, inasmuch as it passed all limits and prepared his downfall, it may be said to have obtained over his nature the mastery ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds

... privilege that imposes suffering involves a wrong. Not only does aristocracy lay on the world a tax in labour and privation that its own splendours, intellectual and worldly, may arise, but by so doing it infects intelligence and grandeur with inhumanity and renders corrupt and odious that pre-eminence which should have been divine. The lower classes, in submitting to the hardship and meanness of their lives—which, to be sure, might have been harder and meaner had no aristocracy existed—must ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... womb.' As to ladies, 'a weakness for the sex remarked in many popular monarchs' (as Atterbury said to Lady Castlewood), our pamphleteer tells the opposite tale. Two Highland charmers being introduced 'to comfort him after the comfort of a man,' James displayed 'an incredible inhumanity to beauty and clean linen,' merely asking them 'whether they thought the Duke of Argyll would stand another battle?' It is hard on a man to be stamped by history as recklessly gay and amorous, also as a perfect Mrs. Gummidge for tearful sentiment, and culpably indifferent to the ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang

... tent. With my eyes I followed my friend in his reckless career, until he was enveloped and hid from my view in a cloud of dust, and that was my farewell of him. I turned round, and observed close to me the quarter-master general, looking with all his four eyes at the effects of his inhumanity. But I have wandered some twenty thousand miles from Brussels, and ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... out that whole blamed intellectual wad on the subject of 'The Inhumanity of Dehorning Hydraulic ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye

... excommunicated should be admitted neither to the intimacy of private friendship nor to the sealing ordinances of the gospel. But it did not follow that the disciples were to treat such persons with insolence or inhumanity. They were not at liberty to act thus towards heathens and publicans; for they were to love even their enemies, and they were to imitate the example of their Father in heaven who "maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust." ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

... she did not seem to share my enthusiasm at having provided Mr. Wax with an opportunity to turn an honest penny or two. She very clearly indicated to me her distrust of all tramps, to which class she was sure Mr. Wax belonged. Thereupon I warned Alice against the inhumanity and wickedness of insensibility to the sufferings of others, and I was glad that the children were at the table with us to hear my remarks in praise of that charity which has compassion ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field

... lost their lives. Famine and pestilence destroyed more than the sword. Before disheartened Europe could again rally, the last strongholds of the Christians were wrested away by the Mohammedans; and their gallant but unsuccessful defenders were treated with every inhumanity, and barbarously murdered in spite ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord

... things. There was nothing too small to escape his terrible attention, and nothing too large. His arraignment passes from the use of rouge to the use of torture, from the hypocrisies of false devotion to the silly absurdities of eccentrics, from the inhumanity of princes to the little habits of fools. The passage in which he describes the celebration of Mass in the Chapel of Versailles, where all the courtiers were to be seen turning their faces to the king's throne and their backs to ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey

... not without plain-spoken remonstrance against his contemplated act of inhumanity. In the prosecution of his spiritual functions Neville Trueman had free access to the people of the town of Niagara, many of whom were members, of his church or congregation. Among these a large number of American soldiers were billeted, ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow

... the dumb brutes did what they could to show their sympathy. The stroke, though it wears all the simplicity of nature, is in the parable due to consummate art; the kindness of the brute brings out in deep relief the inhumanity of man. ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... Mrs. Crayton: her servants made no scruple of mentioning the cruel conduct of their lady to a poor distressed lunatic who claimed her protection; every one joined in reprobating her inhumanity; nay even Corydon thought she might at least have ordered her to be taken care of, but he dare not even hint it to her, for he lived but in her smiles, and drew from her lavish fondness large sums to support an extravagance to which the state of his own finances was very inadequate; ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson

... all Italians of the Peninsula and the Adriatic littoral under one flag and government, but to register herself as standing for justice, law, and humanity against organized barbarity, injustice, illegality, and inhumanity, which, if victorious, would not rest until it had conquered the world. He calls the peace propaganda at this time a "vile lie of conventionality" because its success could only mean the victory of those forces which all honest nationalities and ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various

... the work which he had begun. His old friends could not conceive what had possessed him. "I could forgive," said the Duke of Cumberland, "Fox's political vagaries; but I am quite confounded by his inhumanity. Surely he used to be the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... because it is the thing you chiefly ought to do, as well to keep up the vogue you have in the world, as to make you easy in your fortune: you are merciful to everything but money your best friend, whom you treat with inhumanity."[2] ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville

... decline in the convention. The revolutionary tribunal continued to exist, but with other members and another organization. The law of the 22nd Prairial was abolished, and there were now as much deliberation and moderation, as many protecting forms in trials, as before there had been precipitation and inhumanity. This tribunal was no longer made use of against persons formerly suspected, who were still detained in prison, though under milder treatment, and who, by degrees, were restored to liberty on the plan proposed by Camille Desmoulins for his ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet



Words linked to "Inhumanity" :   barbarity, mercilessness, heinousness, outrage, inhuman treatment, quality, inhuman, bestiality, savagery, enormity, brutality, barbarousness, humaneness, atrociousness, unmercifulness, cruelty, barbarism



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