Hurtful quotes
74 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
"It's a hurtful place, the world, in and of itself. We don't need to add to it. And we're in a place now where we all need one another, and it's going to get rougher."
"I feel like relationships are a beautiful thing, period. Relationships can be really beautiful, they can be really hard, they can be really rewarding, or they can be bad relationships where it's really detrimental and hurtful, but that's life, period."
"It is less hurtful to compel a man to marry someone whom he does not love than to follow a religion in which he does not believe."
"Sin is not hurtful because it is forbidden, but it is forbidden because it is hurtful."
"I can look back and recognize the things I've done and said that were wrong: unethical, gratuitously hurtful, golden-rule-breaking, et cetera. Sometimes the wrongness was even clear at the time, though not as clear as it is now. But I did these things because I felt the pull of a trajectory, a sense of experience piling up the way it does as you turn the pages of a novel. I would be lying if I said I was a different person now. I am the same person. I would do it all again."
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"Treat not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful."
"If you know something hurtful and not true, don't say it. If you know something hurtful and true, don't say it. If you know something helpful but not true, don't say it. If you know something helpful and true, find the right time to say it."
"But would we know, whether the pretended prophet had really attained a just sentiment of morals? Let us attend to his narration; and we shall soon find, that he bestows praise on such instances of treachery, inhumanity, cruelty, revenge, bigotry, as are utterly incompatible with civilized society. No steady rule of right seems there to be attended to; and every action is blamed or praised, so far only as it is beneficial or hurtful to the true believers."
"Life has been some combination of fairy-tale coincidence and joie de vivre and shocks of beauty together with some hurtful self-questioning."
"Once you squeeze toothpaste out, you can't put it back into the tube. The same is true with our words. Once we say something hurtful, we can't take it back"
"When we fail to set boundaries and hold people accountable, we feel used and mistreated. This is why we sometimes attack who they are, which is far more hurtful than addressing a behavior or a choice."
"Nothing is as uncomfortable, dangerous and hurtful as believing that I'm standing on the outside of my life looking in and wondering what it would be like if I had the courage to show up and let myself be seen."
"On religion in particular, the time appears to me to have come, when it is a duty of all who, being qualified in point of knowledge, have, on mature consideration, satisfied themselves that the current opinions are not only false, but hurtful, to make their dissent known."
"Anyone who can be proved to be a seditious person is an outlaw before God and the emperor; and whoever is the first to put him to death does right and well. Therefore let everyone who can, smite, slay and stab, secretly or openly, remembering that nothing can be more poisonous, hurtful, or devilish than a rebel."
"All other knowledge is hurtful to him who has not honesty and good-nature"
"Riches for the most part are hurtful to them that possess them."
"To place any dependence upon Militia, is, assuredly, resting upon a broken staff ... If I was called upon to declare upon Oath , whether the Militia have been most serviceable or hurtful upon the whole; I should subscribe to the latter."
"Quite often good things have hurtful consequences. There are instances of men who have been ruined by their money or killed by their courage."
"What we may think is funny or cute may end up being powerfully hurtful."
"Vicious actions are not hurtful because they are forbidden, but forbidden because they are hurtful."
"Everyone is acting from his own level of consciousness. This is all we can ask of ourselves or anyone else. However hurtful someone is, he is doing the best he can, given the limits of his consciousness."
"Anger is the most useless emotion," Henchick intoned, "destructive to the mind and hurtful to the heart."
"At the core of everything that is hurtful to humanity is a lack of consciousness."
"I try to keep a positive intention, and use whatever resources I have to benefit others. I try to create businesses that I think are not hurtful. I try to do things that I think are helpful to the environment, to the animals, and to the planet."
"I had a friend where it turned out that she hated my guts, all through our friendship. I thought she was my best friend, and then, in high school, she turned on me and had sordid affairs with all of the people that I'd dated. It was less hurtful because I was in high school, so it was more like, 'What's wrong with you? Gross!'"
