EVIL QUOTES VI

quotations about evil

Evil comes up softly like a flower.

CHARLES BAUDELAIRE

"Epilogue"


A check on itself, evil subserves the economies of good, as it were a condiment to give relish to good.

AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT

Table Talk


Evil and good are God's right hand and left.

PHILIP JAMES BAILEY

Festus


I desire to go through life knowing as little of evil in it as possible. To this end, I sometimes avoid looking too closely into the nature of things, studying them only so far as they seem to be good, and abandoning interest in them as soon as their darker feature begin to appear. The good only deserves a hearty interest.

CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE

Intuitions and Summaries of Thought


Men do not differ much about what things they will call evils; they differ enormously about what evils they will call excusable.

G. K. CHESTERTON

Illustrated London News, Oct. 23, 1909


No man is compelled to evil; his consent only makes it his.

WILLIAM PENN

Some Fruits of Solitude


The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.

HANNAH ARENDT

"Thinking", The Life of the Mind


Evil is relative.... You can’t hang a sign on it. You can’t touch it or taste it or cut it with a sword. Evil depends on where you are standing, pointing your indicting finger.

GLEN COOK

The Black Company


We all have dark desires, yearnings for vengeance; and you must remember how those feelings stirred your blood... because what marks the line between good and evil is the choice not to act on them.

ZEDDICUS ZUL ZORANDER

"Bloodline", Legend of the Seeker


Evil lurks in the heart of man, and anonymity tends to bring it out. Internet flamers would never say the jagged things they do if they had to sign their names.

GARRISON KEILLOR

"Renouncing Evil Powers and Anonymity", A Prairie Home Companion, Jan. 12, 2010


Here there's no possibility of doing evil. You live in evil. In the absence of remorse. How could you do evil?

JEAN GENET

The Balcony


I believe that there is one story in the world, and only one. . . . Humans are caught--in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too--in a net of good and evil. . . . There is no other story. A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well--or ill?

JOHN STEINBECK

East of Eden


Is the Deity able to prevent evil, but not willing, where is his benevolence; is he willing, but not able, where is his power; is he both able and willing, whence then is evil?

CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Lacon


It is much easier at all times to prevent an evil than to rectify mistakes.

GEORGE WASHINGTON

letter to James McHenry, Aug. 10, 1798


Only as men succeed in seeing no evil in others will they become free from sin, and sorrow, and suffering.

JAMES ALLEN

Morning and Evening Thoughts


Very few people see their own actions as truly evil.... It is left to their victims to decide what is evil and what is not.

LAURELL K. HAMILTON

Blue Moon


Men may keep a sort of level of good, but no man has ever been able to keep on one level of evil.

G. K. CHESTERTON

"The Flying Stars", The Innocence of Father Brown


Universal bond, we're all the same
Evil man, not to be tamed
Open your mind, and you will find
You're just as evil, as evil as I

LAKE OF TEARS

"Evil Inside", Greater Art


Evil is the canker of life.

EDWARD COUNSEL

Maxims


The hardest fact in the world to accept is the inevitable mixture of evil with good in all things.

AUSTIN O'MALLEY

Keystones of Thought