quotations about evil
Evil endures a moment's flush, and then--leaves but a burnt out shell.
ELISE PUMPELLY CABOT
"Arizona"
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
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
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
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
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
A resolution to avoid an evil is seldom framed till the evil is so far advanced as to make avoidance impossible.
THOMAS HARDY
Far from the Madding Crowd
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
It is much easier at all times to prevent an evil than to rectify mistakes.
GEORGE WASHINGTON
letter to James McHenry, Aug. 10, 1798
Evil comes up softly like a flower.
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
"Epilogue"
No man is compelled to evil; his consent only makes it his.
WILLIAM PENN
Some Fruits of Solitude
Evil and good are God's right hand and left.
PHILIP JAMES BAILEY
Festus
God's M.O. ... is to transmute evil into good. If He is active here, He is doing that now, although our eyes can't perceive it; the process lies hidden beneath the surface of reality, and emerges only later. To, perhaps, our waiting heirs. Paltry people who will not know the dreadful war we've gone through, and the losses we took, unless in some footnote in a minor history book they catch a notion. Some brief mention. With no list of the fallen.
PHILIP K. DICK
A Scanner Darkly
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
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
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
The world we live in is a world of mingled good and evil. Whether it is chiefly good or chiefly bad depends on how we take it. To look at the world in such a way as to emphasize the evil is the art of pessimism. To look at it in such a way as to bring out the good, and throw the evil into the background, is the art of optimism. The facts are the same in either case. It is simply a question of perspective and emphasis.
WILLIAM DEWITT HYDE
The Art of Optimism
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
Don't let us make imaginary evils, when you know we have so many real ones to encounter.
OLIVER GOLDSMITH
The Good-Natured Man
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