Quotes
Quotes about Evil
One of the greatest delusions in the world is the hope that the evils in this world are to be cured by legislation.
Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? Is thine eye evil, because I am good?
I ask not a life for the dear ones, All radiant, as others have done, But that life may have just enough shadow To temper the glare of the sun; I would pray God to guard them from evil, But my prayer would bound back to myself: Ah! a seraph may pray for a sinner, But a sinner must pray for himself.
He that is possessed with a prejudice is possessed with a devil, and one of the worst kinds of devils, for it shuts out the truth, and often leads to ruinous error.
And the Devil did grin, for his darling sin is pride that apes humility.
The spread of evil is the symptom of a vacuum. Whenever evil wins, it is only by default: by the moral failure of those who evade the fact that there can be no compromise on basic principles.
Though an angel should write, still 'tis devils must print.
From lower to the higher next, Not to the top, is Nature's text; And embryo good, to reach full stature, Absorbs the evil in its nature.
Prophet of evil! never hadst thou yet A cheerful word for me. To mark the signs Of coming mischief is thy great delight, Good dost thou ne'er foretell nor bring to pass.
God made bees, and bees made honey, God made man, and man made money, Pride made the devil, and the devil made sin; So God made a cole-pit to put the devil in. - transcribed by James Henry Dixon,
...the evils of mankind are caused, not by the primary aggressiveness of individuals, but by their self-transcending identification with groups whose common denominator is low intelligence and high emotionality.
However human, envy is certainly not one of the sources of discontent that a free society can eliminate. It is probably one of the essential conditions for the preservation of such a society that we do not countenance envy, not sanction its demands by camouflaging it as social justice, but treat it, in the words of John Stuart Mill, as "the most anti-social and evil of all passions.
Always behave like a duck- keep calm and unruffled on the surface but paddle like the devil underneath.
Men never do evil so fully and so happily as when they do it for conscience's sake.
In the alchemy of man's soul almost all noble attributes- courage, honor, love, hope, faith, duty, loyalty, and so on- can be transmuted into ruthlessness. Compassion alone stands apart from the continuous traffic between good and evil proceeding within us. Compassion is the antitoxin of the soul: where there is compassion, even the most poisonous impulses remain relatively harmless.
It is not sheer malice that pricks our ears to evil reports about our fellow men. For there are frequent moments when we feel lower than the lowest of mankind, and this opinion of ourselves isolates us. Hence the rumor that all flesh is base comes almost as a message of hope. It breaks down the wall that has kept us apart, and we feel one with humanity.
When the weak want to give an impression of strength they hint menacingly at their capacity for evil. It is by its promise of a sense of power that evil often attracts the weak.
He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for time is the greatest innovator.
Evil witnesses are eyes and ears of men, if they have souls that do not understand their language.
Reform is born of need, not pity. No vital movement of the people has worked down, for good or evil; fermented, instead, carried up the heaving, cloggy mass.
One of the greatest delusions in the world is the hope that the evils in this world are to be cured by legislation.
The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.
The devil personifies not the nature that is around us but the nature that is within us- the infinitely ferocious and cunning prehuman creature that is still within us, sealed in the subconscious cellars of the psyche.
I am treated as evil by people who claim that they are being oppressed because they are not allowed to force me to practice what they do.
It is wonderful how much time good people spend fighting the devil. If they would only expend the same amount of energy loving their fellow men, the devil would die in his own tracks of ennui.
