Unkindness

Unkindness is an absence of kindness.

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• If we cannot accommodate a viewpoint in a friend without resorting to unkindness, how can we hope to heal the terrible problems of our planet? I no longer think that any principle or opinion is worth anything if it makes you unkind or intolerant.
  • Karen Armstrong, The Spiral Staircase : My Climb Out of Darkness (2004).

• She hath tied
  Sharp-tooth'd unkindness, like a vulture here.
  • William Shakespeare, King Lear (1608), Act II, scene 4, line 136.

• Unkindness may do much;
  And his unkindness may defeat my life,
  But never taint my love.
  • William Shakespeare, Othello (c. 1603), Act IV, scene 2, line 158.

• In nature there's no blemish but the mind;
  None can be call'd deform'd but the unkind.
  • William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night (c. 1601-02), Act III, scene 4, line 401.

• When streams of unkindness, as bitter as gall,
  Bubble up from the heart to the tongue,
  And Meekness is writhing in torment and thrall,
  By the hands of Ingratitude wrung, —
  In the heat of injustice, unwept and unfair,
  While the anguish is festering yet,
  None, none but an angel or God can declare
  "I now can forgive and forget."
  • Martin Farquhar Tupper, Forgive and Forget, lines 1-8.

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 828.

• As "unkindness has no remedy at law," let its avoidance be with you a point of honor.
  • Hosea Ballou, MS, Sermons.

• My lodging it is on the cold ground, and very hard is my fare,
  But that which troubles me most, is the unkindness of my dear.
  • As it appeared in William Davenant's Rivals, an alteration of Beaumont and Fletcher's Two Noble Kinsmen. Attributed by Boosey (publishers), to John Gay.

• Hard Unkindness' alter'd eye,
  That mocks the tear it forced to flow.
  • Thomas Gray, Eton College, Stanza 8.

• Since trifles make the sum of human things,
  And half our misery from our foibles springs;
  Since life's best joys consist in peace and ease,
  And though but few can serve, yet all may please;
  Oh, let th' ungentle spirit learn from hence,
  A small unkindness is a great offence.
  • Hannah More, Sensibility.