quotations about evil
Evil is movement towards void.
DON DELILLO
Great Jones Street
Evil is done without effort, naturally, it is the working of fate; good is always the product of an art.
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
"The Painter of Modern Life", L'Art Romantique
Do not imagine that the good you intend will balance the evil you perform.
NORMAN MACDONALD
Maxims and Moral Reflections
Evils which we think ended are often displaced by worse ones.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
No man commits evil for the sake of it; even the Devil himself has some farther design in sinning, than barely the wicked part of it.
DANIEL DEFOE
Robinson Crusoe
It is a consolation to remember that corruption pushed beyond a certain point provides its own remedy, and that this sort of thing cannot indefinitely continue; but it is less consoling to remember another truth, to wit, that the correction of political and social evil may come in the form of irremediable catastrophe, and that the innocent, who are the greater number, would then suffer most. It is still less consoling to remember the universal human experience that when evil is redressed by the only partly conscious force of reaction, it is not succeeded by a corresponding good, but by some other new and unexpected evil.
HILAIRE BELLOC
The Cruise of the 'Nona'
God is omnipotent; God is wholly good; and yet evil exists. There seems to be some contradiction between these three propositions, so that if any two of them were true the third would be false. But at the same time all three are essential parts of most theological positions: the theologian it seems, at once must adhere and cannot consistently adhere to all three.
J. L. MACKIE
Evil and Omnipotence
No one becomes depraved all at once.
JUVENAL
Satires
We're alone in the darkness ... so we hold hands and tell stories of good and evil to comfort each other. It works, for a while, for a life, for a civilization, perhaps for as long as the species survives. But have no illusion: it makes no difference to the darkness. The darkness swallows us all--good and evil alike--with monolithic disinterst.
GLEN DUNCAN
Talulla Rising
To ignore his capacity for evil is as obtuse as blinding oneself to the heights to which he can soar.
ARIANA FRANKLIN
Mistress of the Art of Death
The line between good and evil is permeable and almost anyone can be induced to cross it when pressured by situational forces.
PHILIP ZIMBARDO
interview with Hans Sherrer, Aug. 27, 2003
Conquer thy own evils before you judge others.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
Evils are to be traced to their sources, and struck at there. Like Barbary pirates, they are to be destroyed through the suppression of the state that sends them forth.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
The most hateful evil in the world is the evil that dresses itself in such a way that men cannot hate it. The men that make wickedness beautiful are the most utterly to be hated.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
The more common method of getting rid of an evil, is to merge it in a greater. Thus, if one suffers a loss of half his fortune at play, he overcomes his mortification by--losing the other half. The most ingenious expedient of this kind, was that of the indigent gentleman of rank, who married his washerwoman to get rid of her bill against him.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.
W. H. AUDEN
"September 1, 1939"
To read of human depravity in the police reports is one thing, to see it fall like a black shadow across one's life is another.
WILLIAM JOHN LOCKE
Septimus
Our present evil is generally thought the worst of our evils, and all our own evils worse than other peoples.
FULKE GREVILLE
Maxims
Wickedness disrobes any man of his excellency.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
Evil seeks out evil.
ROY THOMAS & CLARA NOTO
Red Sonja