quotations about evil
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
Evil and good are God's right hand and left.
PHILIP JAMES BAILEY
Festus
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 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
No man is compelled to evil; his consent only makes it his.
WILLIAM PENN
Some Fruits of Solitude
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
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
Evil comes up softly like a flower.
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
"Epilogue"
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
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
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
Wickedness goes to great lengths and depths where it is not checked and restrained by the free and continuous expression of the indignation of good men.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Apathy and evil. The two work hand in hand. They are the same, really.... Evil wills it. Apathy allows it. Evil hates the innocent and the defenseless most of all. Apathy doesn't care as long as it's not personally inconvenienced.
JAKE THOENE
Shaiton's Fire
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
Where Evil is returned for Evil, the first offender thinks himself excused, because the other is as faulty as he.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
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
All the evil that is tormenting the world seemed to him to be concentrated in a "red flower," in one red flower. It was but necessary to tear it down, and the incessant, heart-rending cries and moans which rise to the indifferent sky from all points of the earth, like its natural breathing, would be silenced. The evil of the world, he believed, lay in the evil will and in the madness of the people. They themselves were to blame for being unhappy, and they could be happy if they wished. This seemed so clear and simple that Max was dumfounded in his amazement at human stupidity. Humanity reminded him of a crowd huddled together in a spacious temple and panic-stricken at the cry of "Fire!"
LEONID ANDREYEV
"Love
It is much easier at all times to prevent an evil than to rectify mistakes.
GEORGE WASHINGTON
letter to James McHenry, Aug. 10, 1798