Conquest is the missionary of valor, and the hard impact of military virtues beats meanness out of the world.
Walter Bagehot

Guard well within yourself that treasure, kindness. Know how to give without hesitation, how to lose without regret, how to acquire without meanness.
George Sand

I consider nothing low but ignorance, vice, and meanness, characteristics generally found where the animal propensities predominate over the higher sentiments.
William John Wills

It has always seemed strange to me... the things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest, are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.
John Steinbeck

Matrimony is the union of meanness and martyrdom.
Karl Kraus

The high-spirited man may indeed die, but he will not stoop to meanness. Fire, though it may be quenched, will not become cool.
Ovid

There is no act of treachery or meanness of which a political party is not capable; for in politics there is no honour.
Benjamin Disraeli

When I want to show the kind of meanness people are capable of, to make it believable I find I have to tone it down. It's in real life that people are over the top.
Todd Solondz

With the introduction of agriculture mankind entered upon a long period of meanness, misery, and madness, from which they are only now being freed by the beneficent operation of the machine.
Bertrand Russell