“There is a streak of cruelty <…> that runs through the human race. You find it everywhere you look, on every page of recorded history. Man is not satisfied with inflicting death alone, he must inflict it with many painful frills. A boy pulls the wings off flies and ties tin cans to a dog's tail. The Assyrians flayed screaming thousands while they were still alive. <…> The Aztecs <…> cut out the hearts of their living sacrifices with a blunt stone knife. The Saxons threw men into the serpent pits or flayed them living and rubbed salt into the quivering flesh as the pelt peeled off.”
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Clifford D. Simak 137
American writer, journalist 1904–1988Related quotes
Pt. 1, ch. 3, sct. 3
Our Man in Havana (1958)
“He who cuts off his nose takes poor revenge for a shame inflicted on him.”
Male ulciscitur dedecus sibi illatum, qui amputat nasum suum.
De Hierosolymitana peregrinatione acceleranda (1189), cited from Mary Beth Rose (ed.) Women in the Middle Ages and Renaissance (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1986) p. 29; translation from John Simpson The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993) p. 55.
A similar proverb, Qui son nez cope deshonore son vis, appears in the late 12th century chanson de geste Garin le Loheren, line 2877.
“To have news value is to have a tin can tied to one’s tail.”
Letter (1 April 1935); published in The Letters of T.E. Lawrence (1988), edited by Malcolm Brown.
Campaign speech in Chicago (6 April 1912)
1910s
Misattributed
Source: Robert McAfee Brown https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_McAfee_Brown. Preface for the 25th anniversary edition of Night https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_%28book%29. Page v, Bantam Books paperback; 1982 reissue edition.
