The ultimate test ... to see the good in evil and the evil in good.
FRANK HERBERT, Heretics of Dune
Being against evil doesn't make you good.
ERNEST HEMINGWAY, Islands in the Stream
Evil seeks out evil.
ROY THOMAS & CLARA NOTO, Red Sonja, vol. 1, no. 2
No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT SHELLEY, A Vindication of the Rights of Men
I preferred my villains to be evil and stay that way, to act like Dracula rather than Frankenstein's monster, who ruined everything by handing that peasant girl a flower. He sort of made up for it by drowning her a few minutes later, but, stil, you couldn't look at him the same way again.
DAVID SEDARIS, When You Are Engulfed in Flames
The wicked know that if the ill they do be of sufficient horror men will not speak against it. That men have just enough stomach for small evils and only these will they oppose.
CORMAC MCCARTHY, The Crossing
All spirits are enslaved which serve things evil.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY, Prometheus Unbound
If there is good to be said, the writer should say it. If there is bad to be said, he should say it in a way that reflects the truth that, though we see the evil, we choose to continue among the living.
JOHN GARDNER, The Art of Fiction
Life is composed of lights and shadows, and we would be untruthful, insincere, and saccharine if we tried to pretend there were no shadows. Most things are good, and they are the strongest things; but there are evil things too, and you are not doing a child a favor by trying to shield him from reality. The important thing is to teach a child that good can always triumph over evil.
WALT DISNEY, Deeds Rather Than Words
Evil is retributive: every trespass slips fetters on the will, holds the soul in durance till contrition and repentance restore it to liberty.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT, Table Talk
Length of days with an evil heart is only length of misery.
C. S. LEWIS, The Magician's Nephew
The world was new each day for God so made it daily. Yet it contained within it all the evils as before, no more, no less.
CORMAC MCCARTHY, The Crossing
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
In some situations there is no absolute good or evil, simply points of view.
BRIAN HERBERT & KEVIN J. ANDERSON, Dune: House Harkonnen
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, Faith and Hope"
- You would not easily guess
- All the modes of distress
- Which torture the tenants of earth;
- And the various evils,
- Which like so many devils,
- Attend the poor souls from their birth.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY, "Verses on a Cat"
It is not easy for some men to know they have done evil, for reasoning and honor are often clouded by pride.
BRIAN HERBERT & KEVEN J. ANDERSON, Dune: House Corrino
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
When anything is in the presence of evil, but is not as yet evil, the presence of good arouses the desire of good in that thing; but the presence of evil, which makes a thing evil, takes away the desire and friendship of the good; for that which was once both good and evil has now become evil only, and the good has no friendship with evil.
Evil is movement towards void.
DON DELILLO, Great Jones Street
No evil can happen to a good man, neither in life nor after death.
Back to Evil Quotes
|
