Quotes
Quotes about Evil
Of two evils, the less is always to be chosen.
Hee must have a long spoone, shall eat with the devill.
He must needes goe whom the devill doth drive.
Oppress'd with two weak evils, age and hunger.
He must needs go that the devil drives.
What, man! defy the Devil: consider, he is an enemy to mankind.
He will give the devil his due.
While you live, tell truth and shame the devil!
There is some soul of goodness in things evil,
Would men observingly distil it out.
And thus I clothe my naked villany
With old odd ends stolen out of holy writ,
And seem a saint when most I play the devil.
Men's evil manners live in brass; their virtues
We write in water.
There was a Brutus once that would have brook'd
The eternal devil to keep his state in Rome
As easily as a king.
Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Cæsar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones.
'T is the eye of childhood
That fears a painted devil.
The devil hath power
To assume a pleasing shape.
With devotion's visage
And pious action we do sugar o'er
The devil himself.
Nay, then, let the devil wear black, for I 'll have a suit of sables.
Assume a virtue, if you have it not.
That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat,
Of habits devil, is angel yet in this.
You are one of those that will not serve God, if the devil bid you.
O thou invisible spirit of wine, if thou hast no name to be known by, let us call thee devil!
Cas. Every inordinate cup is unbless'd, and the ingredient is a devil.
Iago. Come, come, good wine is a good familiar creature, if it be well used.
The lunatic, the lover, and the poet
Are of imagination all compact:
One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,
That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic,
Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt:
The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
Such tricks hath strong imagination,
That if it would but apprehend some joy,
It comprehends some bringer of that joy;
Or in the night, imagining some fear,
How easy is a bush supposed a bear!
The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.
In law, what plea so tainted and corrupt
But being season'd with a gracious voice
Obscures the show of evil?
Princes are like to heavenly bodies, which cause good or evil times, and which have much veneration but no rest.
