All I can say is that women, when they govern, are much harsher than men. Much crueler. Much more bloodthirsty. I'm citing facts, not opinions. You're heartless when you have power. Think of Catherine de Medicis, Catherine of Russia, Elizabeth I of England. Not to mention Lucrezia Borgia, with her poisons and intrigues. You're schemers, you're evil. All of you.

Sometimes those who care for the whole community must act in a way that harms the individual. For a good man it never becomes easy and he avoids it when he can; but when people need him to be harsh, he will be harsh indeed, and he won't shrink from it, he'll do it with his own hand and let it be known what he does.

How does it feel to be cruel to a woman?

Is love a tender thing? It is too rough, too rude, too boisterous, and it pricks like thorn.

In some men compassion for a woman goes beyond all conceivable limits. Their responsiveness places her in unrealizable positions, not to be found in the world, existing only in imagination, and on account of her they are jealous of the surrounding air, of the laws of nature, of the millennia that went by before her.

Cruelty is one of the chief ingredients of love, and divided about equally between the sexes: cruelty of lust, ingratitude, callousness, maltreatment, domination. The same is true of the passive qualities, patience under suffering, even pleasure in ill usage.

It's impossible for men and women who love each other not to hurt each other now and then, but most women would settle happily for a man who tried not to cause the same hurt twice.

When women are angry at men, they call them heartless. When men are angry at women, they call them crazy.

For woman's chief want is to feel that she is wanted. Therefore it is that </br> With women, cruelty is more easily borne than coldness. Indeed, </br> It is astonishing how much downright cruelty a woman will stand from the man she loves or has loved.

Alas, that love, so gentle in his view,
Should be so tyrannous and rough in proof!

*It’s sad. Love looks like a nice thing, but it’s actually very rough when you experience it.*

There is no cruelty greater than a woman's to a man who loves her and whom she does not love; she has no kindness then, no tolerance even, she has only an insane irritation.

Human beings can be awful cruel to one another.

But I was brutal and violent in a way they tell women not to be.

It is really a hard life. Men will not be nice to you if you are not good-looking, and women will not be nice to you if you are.