Abuse

The human race tends to remember the abuses to which it has been subjected rather than the endearments —Bertolt Brecht

Abuse is the improper usage or treatment of a thing, often to unfairly or improperly gain benefit. Abuse can come in many forms, such as: physical or verbal maltreatment, injury, assault, violation, rape, unjust practices, crimes, or other types of aggression. To these descriptions, one can also add the Kantian notion of the wrongness of using another human being as means to an end rather than as ends in themselves. Some sources describe abuse as "socially constructed", which means there may be more or less recognition of the suffering of a victim at different times and societies.

See also:

Abuse of power

Bullying

Quotes

• Facile aerumnam ferre possum, si inde abest iniuria:
  Etiam iniuriam, nisi contra constat contumelia.
  • Men can easily bear hardship if there is no injury with it; and they can bear even an injury, unless they have to face insults also.
    • Caecilius Statius, Fallacia ('The Fraud'), fragment 4; as quoted by Nonius, 430, 10

• The human race tends to remember the abuses to which it has been subjected rather than the endearments. What's left of kisses? Wounds, however, leave scars.
  • Bertolt Brecht. Quoted in: Donna L. Huisjen, The Bible on Families (2014), p. 159

• As to abuse, I thrive on it. Abuse, hearty abuse, is a tonic to all save men of indifferent health.
  • Norman Douglas, Some Limericks (1928), Introduction

• There'a a phrase, the elephant in the living room, which purports to describe what it's like to live with a drug addict, an alcoholic, an abuser. People outside such relationships will sometimes ask, "How could you let such a business go on for so many years? Didn't you see the elephant in the living room?" And it's so hard for anyone living in a more normal situation to understand the answer that comes closest to the truth: "I'm sorry, but it was there when I moved in. I didn't know it was an elephant; I thought it was part of the furniture." There comes an aha-moment for some folks—the lucky ones—when they suddenly recognize the difference.
  • Stephen King, The Dark Tower (2004), Ch. 3

• I believe that many people who were abused as children do themselves—and the entire struggle—a disservice when they refer to themselves as "survivors." A long time ago, I found myself in the middle of a war zone. I was not killed. Hence, I "survived." That was happenstance ... just plain luck, not due to any greatness of character or heroism on my part. But what about those raised in a POW camp called "childhood?" Some of those children not only lived through it, not only refused to imitate the oppressor (evil is a decision, not a destiny), but actually maintained sufficient empathy to care about the protection of other children once they themselves became adults and were "out of danger." To me, such people are our greatest heroes. They represent the hope of our species, living proof that there is nothing bio–genetic about child abuse. I call them transcenders, because "surviving" (i.e., not dying from) child abuse is not the significant thing. It is when chance becomes choice that people distinguish themselves. Two little children are abused. Neither dies. One grows up and becomes a child abuser. The other becomes a child protector. One "passes it on." One "breaks the cycle." Should we call them both by the same name? Not in my book. (And not in my books, either.)
  • Andrew Vachss, "Survivors and Transcenders"

• There's a very specific formula for creating a monster. It starts with chronic, unrelenting abuse. There's got to be societal notification and then passing on. The child eventually believes that what's being done is societally sanctioned. And after a while, empathy – which we have to learn, we're not born with it – cracks and dies. He feels only his own pain. There's your predatory sociopath."
  • Andrew Vachss, Unleashing the Criminal Mind," San Francisco Examiner, July 12, 1990.

• If you look at Burke closely, you'll see the prototypical abused child: hypervigilant, distrustful. He's so committed to his family of choice—not his DNA-biological family, which tortured him, or the state which raised him, but the family that he chose—that homicide is a natural consequence of injuring any of that family.
  • Andrew Vachss, Horror Online, May 1999.

• I don't believe this country will ever come to grips with child abuse until they make the obvious, simple connection between today's victim and tomorrow's predator. As long as they believe a Ted Bundy or a John Wayne Gacy is a biogenetic mistake as opposed to a beast that was built and a monster that was made, they'll continue to blithely walk around, saying, 'I'm against child abuse.'"
  • Andrew Vachss, Todd Taylor's interview October 23, 2001, on Razorcake.com.

• We don't distinguish between the various forms of child abuse. Emotional abuse ... is pretty much ignored. When someone spends their life being told, 'You're stupid, you're a disgrace, I should have aborted you, you ruined my life,' it scars them in ways that are almost impossible to describe with words. And yet, such a person describing their life would be told, 'Oh, you weren't an incest victim? Oh, you weren't burned with cigarettes? So, how abused were you really?
  • Andrew Vachss, Patty Satalia WPSU on October 24, 2004 [www.wpsu.org/radio/Audio/takenote/TN544.ram]

Collins Thematic Dictionary of Quotations

Quotes reported in: Robert Andrews, ed., Collins Thematic Dictionary of Quotations (1992), pp. 1–2

• It seldom pays to be rude. It never pays to be only half-rude.
  • Norman Douglas

• Some guy hit my fender the other day, and I said unto him, 'Be fruitful, and multiply'. But not in those words.
  • Woody Allen

• A man has no more right to say an uncivil thing to another man than he has to knock him down.
  • Dr Samuel Johnson

• There is more credit in being abused by fools than praised by rogues.
  • F. E. Smith (Lord Birkenhead)

• Abuse is as great a mistake in controversy as panegyric in biography.
  • Cardinal John Newman

• Touchstone: I will name you the degrees. The first, the Retort Courteous; the second, the Quip Modest; the third, the Reply Churlish; the fourth, the Reproof Valiant; the fifth, the Countercheck Quarrelsome; the sixth, the Lie with Circumstance; the seventh, the Lie Direct.
  • William Shakespeare, As You Like It, Act 5, Scene 4

• A fly, Sir, may sting a stately horse and make him wince; but one is but an insect, and the other is a horse still.
  • Dr Samuel Johnson