quotations about evil
Wickedness disrobes any man of his excellency.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
I think that if there were a God, there would be less evil on this earth. I believe that if evil exists here below, then either it was willed by God or it was beyond His powers to prevent it. Now I cannot bring myself to fear a God who is either spiteful or weak. I defy Him without fear and care not a fig for his thunderbolts.
MARQUIS DE SADE
Justine or The Misfortunes of Virtue
Apathy is the glove in which evil slips its hand.
ANONYMOUS
We try to bring up our children so that they are protected from the world's evils, only to find we've raised a pack of innocents who seem to be about to stumble into them at every turn just from sheer stupidity!
SAMUEL R. DELANY
Neverÿon
Evil does not approach us as pride any more, but on the contrary as slumber, lassitude, concealment of the "I," and distortion of the beyond. It approaches us in far more dreadful fashion.... It may make us so quickly contented, that any definitive fire will die down. The venomous, breathtaking frigid mist seems able ... to harden hearts and fill them with envy, obduracy and resentment, with bloody scorn for the divine image and light, with all the causes of the only true original sin, which is not wanting to be like God.
ERNST BLOCH
Man on His Own
There is very much in the world that is bad. But usually the attempt to defeat evil engenders more evil. I advise you to do good; that is the only way to win the victory.
SERGEI LUKYANENKO
Last Watch
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.
W. H. AUDEN
"September 1, 1939"
Do not be dismayed to learn there is a bit of the devil in you. There is a bit of the devil in us all.
ARTHUR BYRON COVER
Night of the Living Rerun
To fight evil, one must know evil. One must journey back through time, and find that fork in the road where heroes turn one way and villains turn another.
MOHINDER SURESH
"Chapter Eight: Villains", Heroes
So much good, so much evil. Just add water.
MARKUS ZUSAK
The Book Thief
In many cases, it is very hard to fix the bounds of Good and Evil, because these part, as Day and Night, which are separated by Twilight.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
As the fishes that are taken in an evil net,
and as the birds that are caught in the snare;
so are the sons of men snared in evil time,
when it falleth suddenly upon them.
DORIS LESSING
Ecclesiastes or, The Preacher
More evil gets done in the name of righteousness than any other way.
GLEN COOK
Dreams of Steel
The theory of evil being merely permitted by God, is unspeakably absurd; for, if he permits any act, he either does the act himself, or some other power, who is not God, does it; but no other power, which is not God, can possibly do anything whatever; for then there would exist an operative power, acting from itself, independently of God, a power of the Divine Order, only weaker -- which is absurd by the hypothesis that God is absolute.
WILLIAM BATCHELDER GREENE
Remarks on the Science of History
Fairly examined, truly understood,
No man is wholly bad, nor wholly good.
THEOGNIS OF MEGARA
Fragment XLI
Evil comes and evil goes.
MY LIFE WITH THE THRILL KILL KULT & BOMB GANG GIRLS
"Mr. & Mrs. Bottomless Pit", Crime for All Seasons
Evil endures a moment's flush, and then--leaves but a burnt out shell.
ELISE PUMPELLY CABOT
"Arizona"
Evil is always possible. And goodness is eternally difficult.
ANNE RICE
Interview with the Vampire
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
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