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9bcc8ad When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it--always. despair evil goodness inspirational love sadness truth victory Mahatma Gandhi
be90587 May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house. benediction evil goodwill humor inspirational wishes George Carlin
025e191 Evil begins when you begin to treat people as things. evil humanity kindness Terry Pratchett
36fadd4 The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist; a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. artists evil happiness pain Ursula K. LeGuin
e47b4b8 "I know [Umbridge] by reputation and I'm sure she's no Death Eater-" "She's foul enough to be one..." "Yes, but the world isn't split into good people and Death Eaters." dolores-umbridge evil good harry-potter sirius-black umbridge J. K. Rowling
69cbe8f The man who refuses to judge, who neither agrees nor disagrees, who declares that there are no absolutes and believes that he escapes responsibility, is the man responsible for all the blood that is now spilled in the world. Reality is an absolute, existence is an absolute, a speck of dust is an absolute and so is a human life. Whether you live or die is an absolute. Whether you have a piece of bread or not, is an absolute. Whether you eat your bread or see it vanish into a looter's stomach, is an absolute. There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil. The man who is wrong still retains some respect for truth, if only by accepting the responsibility of choice. But the man in the middle is the knave who blanks out the truth in order to pretend that no choice or values exist, who is willing to sit out the course of any battle, willing to cash in on the blood of the innocent or to crawl on his belly to the guilty, who dispenses justice by condemning both the robber and the robbed to jail, who solves conflicts by ordering the thinker and the fool to meet each other halfway. In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit. In that transfusion of blood which drains the good to feed the evil, the compromise is the transmitting rubber tube. compromise conflict-resolution evil indecisiveness judgement Ayn Rand
33cc17c It was important, Dumbledore said, to fight, and fight again, and keep fighting, for only then could evil be kept at bay, though never quite eradicated. . . . evil fight J.K. Rowling
9deaf17 When one with honeyed words but evil mind Persuades the mob, great woes befall the state. deceit deception elections evil false-promises falsehood government power seduction tyranny Euripides
97b96df There must have been a moment, at the beginning, where we could have said -- no. But somehow we missed it. evil Tom Stoppard
b469945 I hurt myself deeply, though at the time I had no idea how deeply. I should have learned many things from that experience, but when I look back on it, all I gained was one single, undeniable fact. That ultimately I am a person who can do evil. I never consciously tried to hurt anyone, yet good intentions notwithstanding, when necessity demanded, I could become completely self-centred, even cruel. I was the kind of person who could, using some plausible excuse, inflict on a person I cared for a wound that would never heal. evil good-intentions hurt looking-back self-centered wound Haruki Murakami
a61f7fe Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn. evil h-p-lovecraft horror weird H.P. Lovecraft
6a91cf6 Human reason can excuse any evil. evil humanity reasoning Veronica Roth
473f701 Is evil something you are? Or is it something you do? evil personality Bret Easton Ellis
c333f01 People are never so completely and enthusiastically evil as when they act out of religious conviction. evil fanaticism fundamentalism religion Umberto Eco
87d3de8 Learn to distinguish the difference between errors of knowledge and breaches of morality. An error of knowledge is not a moral flaw, provided you are willing to correct it; only a mystic would judge human beings by the standard of an impossible, automatic omniscience. But a breach of morality is the conscious choice of an action you know to be evil, or a willful evasion of knowledge, a suspension of sight and of thought. That which you do not know, is not a moral charge against you; but that which you refuse to know, is an account of infamy growing in your soul. Make every allowance for errors of knowledge; do not forgive or accept any break of morality. evil knowledge morality responsibility Ayn Rand
cc4c255 To light a candle is to cast a shadow... equilibrium evil good knowledge taoism Ursula K. Le Guin
f924ede "I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of "Admin." The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern." " big-business bureaucracy corporations corporatocracy dictatorship efficiency evil hell management police-state C.S. Lewis
ae51c4b When people see some things as beautiful beauty evil good inspirational lao-tzu tao-te-ching worldview Lao Tzu
870132d Our labour preserves us from three great evils -- weariness, vice, and want. evil greed labor need vice want weariness work Voltaire
286a506 The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones. death deeds evil good legacy remembrance reputation William Shakespeare
da39a3e inspirational motivational american-dream freedom watchmen choice darkness dedication evil goodness hardship hope marie-lu beauty harmony inspiration intelligence intimate life meaning-of-life nature order pure quailty science Terry Pratchett
3e82b81 And I came to believe that good and evil are names for what people do, not for what they are. All we can say is that this is a good deed, because it helps someone or that's an evil one because it hurts them. People are too complicated to have simple labels. complicated deed evil good labels name people Philip Pullman
1aa33a8 Because the horror of Communism, Stalinism, is not that bad people do bad things -- they always do. It's that good people do horrible things thinking they are doing something great. communism evil society stalinism totalitarianism Slavoj Žižek
2271160 Point me out the happy man and I will point you out either extreme egotism, selfishness, evil -- or else an absolute ignorance. evil happiness ignorance Graham Greene
b3a302e "In this treacherous world Nothing is the truth nor a lie. evil good lies perception truth Pedro Calderón de la Barca
8647ad5 " This was a brave statement but innocently absurd. No one will ever understand Auschwitz. What I might have set down with more accuracy would have been: Auschwitz itself remains inexplicable. The most profound statement yet made about Auschwitz was not a statement at all, but a response. The query: "At Auschwitz, tell me, where was God?" And the answer: "Where was man?" evil god humanity man understanding William Styron
f09f7e6 Darkness always had its part to play. Without it, how would we know when we walked in the light? It's only when its ambitions become too grandiose that it must be opposed, disciplined, sometimes--if necessary--brought down for a time. Then it will rise again, as it must. evil Clive Barker
19ff0ee There are only two forces at work in this world- black and white. Only people are grey. evil good inspirational right wrong Chris Heimerdinger
0009a65 No one just starts giggling and wearing black and signs up to become a villainous monster. How the hell do you think it happens? It happens to people. Just people. They make questionable choices, for what might be very good reasons. They make choice after choice, and none of them is slaughtering roomfuls of saints, or murdering hundreds of baby seals, or rubber-room irrational. But it adds up. And then one day they look around and realized that they're so far over the line that they can't remember where it was. dresden-files evil good-and-evil villains Jim Butcher
f99c6d9 The important task of literature is to free man, not to censor him, and that is why Puritanism was the most destructive and evil force which ever oppressed people and their literature: it created hypocrisy, perversion, fears, sterility. censorship evil fear freedom hypocrisy intellectual-freedom literature perversion puritanism sterility Anaïs Nin
e599648 When you start with a necessary evil, and then over time the necessity passes away, what's left? animal-welfare animals carnism evil factory-farms meat necessity Matthew Scully
176ae3a Perhaps it is only human nature to inflict suffering on anything that will endure suffering, whether by reason of its genuine humility, or indifference, or sheer helplessness. evil suffering Honoré de Balzac
2fb1205 There's only one great evil in the world today. Despair. evil world Evelyn Waugh
d1b7d5e Dan, I'm not a Republic serial villain. Do you seriously think I'd explain my master-stroke if there remained the slightest chance of you affecting its outcome? I did it thirty-five minutes ago. evil life mastermind ozymandias plot Alan Moore
0acea56 "I believe in good and evil," said Jem. "And I believe the soul is eternal. But I don't believe in the fiery pit, the pitchforks, or endless torment. I do not believe you can threaten people into goodness." evil good torment Cassandra Clare
8f7a38c The subtle and deadly change of heart that might occur in you would be involved with the realization that a civilization is not destroyed by wicked people; it is not necessary that people be wicked but only that they be spineless. cowardice evil James Baldwin
357e505 There is nothing inhuman, evil, or irrational which does not give some comfort, provided it is shared by a group. evil psychoanalysis religion Erich Fromm
aa4d12d It strikes me profoundly that the world is more often than not a bad and cruel place. american-psycho conclusion crime cruel demons epiphany evil gore horror human-beings human-nature humanity humans life living murder murderer murderers psycho psychopath quote serial-killer serial-killers society the-world theory Bret Easton Ellis
adef29a How often the priest had heard the same confession--Man was so limited: he hadn't even the ingenuity to invent a new vice: the animals knew as much. It was for this world that Christ had died: the more evil you saw and heard about you, the greater the glory lay around the death; it was too easy to die for what was good or beautiful, for home or children or civilization--it needed a God to die for the half-hearted and the corrupt. corruption death evil glory god sacrifice sin vice Graham Greene
d48ec3e "It's daft, locking us up," said Nanny. "I'd have had us killed." "That's because you're basically good," said Magrat. "The good are innocent and create justice. The bad are guilty, which is why they invent mercy." ethics evil good philosophy-of-science sociology Terry Pratchett
813c17e None of us can avoid being contaminated by the world's evils; it's all a matter of what attitude you take towards them. evil Azar Nafisi
b16e716 Evil is an act, not an appetite. How many haven't wanted to slash the throat of some boor across the dining room table? Present company excepted of course. Everyone has the appetite. If you give in to it, it, that act is evil. The appetite is normal. appetite evil Gregory Maguire
0d2987a There were a billion lights out there on the horizon and I knew that all of them put together weren't enough to light the darkness in the hearts of some men. evil hearts lights psychology psychopaths souls Michael Connelly
ba3f9cb The devil's agents may be of flesh and blood, may they not? devil evil mankind truth Arthur Conan Doyle
ba43f85 WHO KNOWS WHAT EVIL LURKS IN THE HEART OF MEN? The Death of Rats looked up from the feast of the potato. SQUEAK, he said. Death waved a hand dismissively. WELL, YES, OBVIOUSLY ME, he said. I JUST WONDERED IF THERE WAS ANYONE ELSE. evil knowledge squeak truth Terry Pratchett
e3bfd7c I believe that there is one story in the world, and only one, that has frightened and inspired us, so that we live in a Pearl White serial of continuing thought and wonder. Humans are caught - in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too - in a net of good and evil. I think this is the only story we have and that it occurs on all levels of feeling and intelligence. Virtue and vice were warp and woof of our first consciousness, and they will be the fabric of our last, and this despite any changes we may impose on field and river and mountain, on economy and manners. There is no other story. A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well - or ill? evil good john-steinbeck story John Steinbeck
b0564a4 Evil cannot and will not be vanquished by evil. Dark will only swallow dark and deepen. The good and the light are the keenest weapons. evil good-and-evil Nora Roberts
cb097a4 The Earth is beautiful, and bright, and kindly, but that is not all. The Earth is also terrible, and dark, and cruel. The rabbit shrieks dying in the green meadows. The mountains clench their great hands full of hidden fire. There are sharks in the sea, and there is cruelty in men's eyes. evil life nature Ursula K. Le Guin
20a276b "The face of "evil" is always the face of total need. A dope fiend is a man in total need of dope. Beyond a certain frequency need knows absolutely no limit or control. In the words of total need: "Wouldn't you?" Yes you would. You would lie, cheat, inform on your friends, steal, do anything to satisfy total need. Because you would be in a state of total sickness, total possession, and not in a position to act in any other way. Dope fiends are sick people who cannot act other than they do. A rabid dog cannot choose but bite." drug-addiction evil William S. Burroughs
0af12f4 Sin, death, and hell have set their marks on him, And all their ministers attend on him. evil William Shakespeare
0b31394 It's obsequious little nicety-nice girls like me who allow assholes to run the world: Miss Harlot O'Harlots, billionaire phony tree huggers, hypocrite drug-snorting, weed-puffing peace activists who fund the mass-murdering drug cartels and perpetuate crushing poverty in dirt-poor banana republics. It's my petty fear of personal rejection that allows so many true evils to exist. My cowardice enables atrocities. evil Chuck Palahniuk
f9686e4 For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Eph. 6:12 (NIV) bible evil Anonymous
105e4c5 There are no self-proclaimed villains, only regiments of self-proclaimed saints. Victorious historians rule where good or evil lies. evil good morality Glen Cook
f6d3db1 "Dad, will they ever come back?" "No. And yes." Dad tucked away his harmonica. "No not them. But yes, other people like them. Not in a carnival. God knows what shape they'll come in next. But sunrise, noon, or at the latest, sunset tomorrow they'll show. They're on the road." "Oh, no," said Will. "Oh, yes, said Dad. "We got to watch out the rest of our lives. The fight's just begun." They moved around the carousel slowly. "What will they look like? How will we know them?" "Why," said Dad, quietly, "maybe they're already here." Both boys looked around swiftly. But there was only the meadow, the machine, and themselves. Will looked at Jim, at his father, and then down at his own body and hands. He glanced up at Dad. Dad nodded, once, gravely, and then nodded at the carousel, and stepped up on it, and touched a brass pole. Will stepped up beside him. Jim stepped up beside Will. Jim stroked a horse's mane. Will patted a horse's shoulders. The great machine softly tilted in the tides of night. Just three times around, ahead, thought Will. Hey. Just four times around, ahead, thought Jim. Boy. Just ten times around, back, thought Charles Halloway. Lord. Each read the thoughts in the other's eyes. How easy, thought Will. Just this once, thought Jim. But then, thought Charles Halloway, once you start, you'd always come back. One more ride and one more ride. And, after awhile, you'd offer rides to friends, and more friends until finally... The thought hit them all in the same quiet moment. ...finally you wind up owner of the carousel, keeper of the freaks... proprietor for some small part of eternity of the traveling dark carnival shows.... Maybe, said their eyes, they're already here." dark evil fear internal-conflict life light temptation Ray Bradbury
51d872a When all this is over, people will try to blame the Germans alone, and the Germans will try to blame the Nazis alone, and the Nazis will try to blame Hitler alone. They will make him bear the sins of the world. But it's not true. You suspected what was happening, and so did I. It was already too late over a year ago. I caused a reporter to lose his job because you told me to. He was deported. The day I did that I made my little contribution to civilization, the only one that matters. civilization cowardice denunciation deportation evil genocide guilt hitler knowledge nazis personal-responsibility responsibility willful-ignorance Iain Pears
c98c0d7 As a convinced atheist, I ought to agree with Voltaire that Judaism is not just one more religion, but in its way the root of religious evil. Without the stern, joyless rabbis and their 613 dour prohibitions, we might have avoided the whole nightmare of the Old Testament, and the brutal, crude wrenching of that into prophecy-derived Christianity, and the later plagiarism and mutation of Judaism and Christianity into the various rival forms of Islam. Much of the time, I do concur with Voltaire, but not without acknowledging that Judaism is dialectical. There is, after all, a specifically Jewish version of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, with a specifically Jewish name--the --for itself. The term derives from the word for 'mind' or 'intellect,' and it is naturally associated with ethics rather than rituals, life rather than prohibitions, and assimilation over 'exile' or 'return.' It's everlastingly linked to the name of the great German teacher Moses Mendelssohn, one of those conspicuous Jewish hunchbacks who so upset and embarrassed Isaiah Berlin. (The other way to upset or embarrass Berlin, I found, was to mention that he himself was a cousin of Menachem Schneerson, the 'messianic' Lubavitcher .) However, even pre-enlightenment Judaism forces its adherents to study and think, it reluctantly teaches them what others think, and it may even teach them to think also. antisemitism assimilation atheism chabad-messianism christianity dialectics education enlightenment ethics evil exile free-thought germans haskalah intellect isaiah-berlin islam judaism life menachem-mendel-schneerson messianism monotheism moses-mendelssohn old-testament plagiarism prohibitions prophecy rabbis rebbes religion return rituals study thought voltaire Christopher Hitchens
b4b686a There's light and joy, but there's also darkness all around and we can be lost in it. david-almond evil joy kit-s-wilderness David Almond
b654c7d If there is no wound in your hand You can carry poison in your hand. Poison does not attack one who is unwounded. There is no evil for one who does not do evil. evil poison v-124 Anonymous
d550872 It's my petty fear of personal rejection that allows so many true evils to exist. My cowardice enables atrocities. evil fear rejection Chuck Palahniuk
27f8395 There's a point at which when I start to know a man well--this isn't true of women--I wonder whether there's something in him that's evil. Something that's pure and can't be touched. This quality of evil may be related to the quality of artistry, for an artist has the same characteristics. evil men Kathy Acker
be1a822 There were moments when he looked on evil simply as a mode through which he could realize his conception of the beautiful. evil Oscar Wilde
2ab7051 She released her grievances like handfuls of birdseed: They are there, and they are gone. black-heart evil gone grief grieving heartless malicious nothing release sadist sadistic self-obsessed self-obsession stoic unimportant Gillian Flynn
f71114a Brother raises a hand against brother and son against father (how terrible!) and the father also against son. And moreover it is a continuity-matter, for if the father did not strike the son, they would not be alike. It is done to perpetuate similarity. Oh, Henderson, man cannot keep still under the blows.... A hit B? B hit C?--we have not enough alphabet to cover the condition. A brave man will try to make the evil stop with him. He shall keep the blow. No man shall get it from him, and that is a sublime ambition. evil inhumanity man-s-inhumanity-to-man Saul Bellow
3ae4d06 By God, if women had written stories, As clerks had within here oratories, They would have written of men more wickedness Than all the mark of Adam may redress. dishonesty evil gender inequality men storytelling wickedness women Geoffrey Chaucer
f35c66d The West's post-Holocaust pledge that genocide would never again be tolerated proved to be hollow, and for all the fine sentiments inspired by the memory of Auschwitz, the problem remains that denouncing evil is a far cry from doing good. apathy auschewitz evil genocide good hitler hollow holocaust indifference rwanda sentiment south-sudan sudan talk tolerance west Philip Gourevitch
7e563ba If perchance a friend should betray you; if he forms a subtle plot to get hold of what is yours; if people should try to spread evil reports about you, would you tamely submit to all this without flying into a rage? deceit evil friend friends-betrayal harm life people rage society wrongdoing Molière
33f2ad6 By definition, a human being is endowed with free will. He can use this to choose between good and evil. If he can only perform good or only perform evil, then he is a clockwork orange - meaning that he has the appearance of an organism lovely with colour and juice but is in fact only a clockwork toy to be wound up by God or the Devil or (since this is increasingly replacing both) the Almighty State. It is as inhuman to be totally good as it is to be totally evil. The important thing is moral choice. Evil has to exist along with good in order that moral choice may operate. Life is sustained by the grinding opposition of moral entities. This is what the television news is all about. Unfortunately there is so much original sin in us all that we find evil rather attractive. To devastate is easier and more spectacular than to create. evil good moral-compass morality morals sin Anthony Burgess
626c5dd Bluebell had been saying that he knew the men hated us for raiding their crops and gardens, and Toadflax answered, 'That wasn't why they destroyed the warren. It was just because we were in their way. They killed us to suit themselves. evil human-cruelty Richard Adams
be56535 A civilization is not destroyed by wicked people; it is not necessary that people be wicked but only that they be spineless. evil fear wickedness James Baldwin
643a8f6 Throughout the world what remains of the vast public spaces are now only the stuff of legends: Robin Hood's forest, the Great Plains of the Amerindians, the steppes of the nomadic tribes, and so forth... Rousseau said that the first person who wanted a piece of nature as his or her own exclusive possession and transformed it into the transcendent form of private property was the one who invented evil. Good, on the contrary, is what is common. empire evil good private-property Antonio Negri Michael Hardt
4e2bec8 There are always choices. But sometimes there are no good ones. bad choice choices decide decision evil good reality truth worse worst Robin Hobb
153aaef "The Patrician took a sip of his beer. "I have told this to few people, gentlemen, and I suspect I never will again, but one day when I was a young boy on holiday in Uberwald I was walking along the bank of a stream when I saw a mother otter with her cubs. A very endearing sight, I'm sure you will agree, and even as I watched, the mother otter dived into the water and came up with a plump salmon, which she subdued and dragged on to a half-submerged log. As she ate it, while of course it was still alive, the body split and I remember to this day the sweet pinkness of its roes as they spilled out, much to the delight of the baby otters, who scrambled over themselves to feed on the delicacy. One of nature's wonders, gentlemen: mother and children dining on mother and children. And that's when I first learned about evil. It is built into the nature of the universe. Every world spins in pain. If there is any kind of supreme being, I told myself, it is up to all of us to become his moral superior." evil existentialism mothers patrician understanding Terry Pratchett
646c241 The human heart may find here and there a resting-place short of the highest height of affection, but we seldom stop in the steep, downward slope of hatred. evil hatred Honoré de Balzac
8350691 Goodness works in mysterious ways. Even in the deepest dark, you'll find a light to shine your way through. evil goodness light shine-your-light Melissa de la Cruz
f547a66 In the many months of his absence, she never wondered whether he was true to her or not; she knew he was. She knew, even though she was too young to know the reason, that indiscriminate desire and unselective indulgence were possible only to those who regarded sex and themselves as evil. evil love sex trust Ayn Rand
dd6d781 Fear is a vile thing, and is at the bottom of almost every wrong and hatred of the world. evil fear vile L.M. Montgomery
5bb6eb0 George Bush made a mistake when he referred to the Saddam Hussein regime as 'evil.' Every liberal and leftist knows how to titter at such black-and-white moral absolutism. What the president should have done, in the unlikely event that he wanted the support of America's peace-mongers, was to describe a confrontation with Saddam as the 'lesser evil.' This is a term the Left can appreciate. Indeed, 'lesser evil' is part of the essential tactical rhetoric of today's Left, and has been deployed to excuse or overlook the sins of liberal Democrats, from President Clinton's bombing of Sudan to Madeleine Albright's veto of an international rescue for Rwanda when she was U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Among those longing for nuance, moral relativism--the willingness to use the term evil, when combined with a willingness to make accommodations with it--is the smart thing: so much more sophisticated than 'cowboy' language. al-shifa-pharmaceutical-factory anti-war ba-ath-party bill-clinton democratic-party-united-states evil george-w-bush iraq iraq-war leftism liberalism madeleine-albright moral-absolutism moral-relativism morality opposition-to-the-iraq-war peace-movement presidency-of-bill-clinton presidency-of-george-w-bush rwanda rwandan-genocide saddam-hussein sudan united-nations united-states Christopher Hitchens
92c0a0b The devil's finest trick is to persuade you that he does not exist. devil evil Charles Baudelaire
8a54a12 Very well. He'd lighten up. As a matter of fact, he felt as light as the bubbly froth that flew from the lips of the waves. Whatever else his long, unprecedented life might have been, it had been fun. Fun! If others should find that appraisal shallow, frivolous, so be it. To him, it seemed now to largely have been some form of play. And he vowed that in the future he would strive to keep that sense of play more in mind, for he'd grown convinced that play--more than piety, more than charity or vigilance--was what allowed human beings to transcend evil. evil fun life piety play transcendence vigilance Tom Robbins
5f429f8 This was how an enemy should be dealt with: with a dagger, not a declaration. death evil George R.R. Martin
121d680 "These studies are the result of my attempt to extract the essence of literature. Literature is either the essential or nothing. I believe that the Evil--an acute form of Evil--which it expresses, has a sovereign value for us. But this concept does not exclude morality: on the contrary, it demands a 'hypermorality.' evil literature morality Georges Bataille
49bf4c7 There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root, and it may be that he who bestows the largest amount of time and money on the needy is doing the most by his mode of life to produce that misery which he strives in vain to relieve. activism evil poverty Henry David Thoreau
a025970 All we Karamazovs are such insects. And angel as you are, that insect lives in you, too, and will stir up a tempest in your blood. Tempests, because sensual lust is a tempest - worse than a tempest! Beauty is a terrible and awful thing! It is terrible because it has not been fathomed and never can be fathomed, for God sets before us nothing but riddles. Here the boundaries meet and all contradictions exist side by side. I am not an educated nor cultured man, Alyosha, but I've thought a lot about this. It's terrible what mysteries there are! Too many riddles weigh men down on earth. We must solve as we can, and try to keep a dry skin in the water. Beauty! I can't bear the thought that a man of lofty mind and heart begins with the ideal of the Madonna and ends with the ideal of Sodom. What's still more awful is that a man with the ideal of Sodom in his soul does not renounce the ideal of the Madonna, and his heart may be on fire with that ideal, genuinely on fire, just as in his days of youth and innocence. Yes, man is broad, too broad. I'd have him narrower. The devil only knows what to make of it! What to the mind is shameful is beauty and nothing else to the heart. Is there beauty in Sodom? Believe me, that for the immense mass of mankind beauty is found in Sodom. Did you know that secret? The awful thing is that beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and the devil are fighting there and the battlefield is the heart of man. evil god Fyodor Dostoyevsky
89b3c74 The evil in the world must not make me doubt the existence of God. There could be no evil if there were no God. Before there can be a hole in a uniform, there must be a uniform; before there is death, there must be life; before there is error, there must be truth; before there is a crime, there must be liberty and law; before there is a war, there must be peace; before there is a devil, there must be a God, rebellion against whom made the devil. evil god goodness the-devil Fulton J. Sheen
6d8c5b9 Odd, don't you think? I have seen war, and invasions and riots. I have heard of massacres and brutalities beyond imagining, and I have kept my faith in the power of civilization to bring men back from the brink. And yet one women writes a letter, and my whole world falls to pieces. You see, she is an ordinary woman. A good one, even. That's the point ... Nothing [a recognizably bad person does] can surprise or shock me, or worry me. But she denounced Julia and sent her to her death because she resented her, and because Julia is a Jew. I thought in this simple contrast between the civilized and the barbaric, but I was wrong. It is the civilized who are the truly barbaric, and the [Nazi] Germans are merely the supreme expression of it. civilization denunciation evil good jews nazis ordinariness pettiness resentment war wwii Iain Pears
77ca31b A beautiful face can mask great evil... evil face mask Francine Rivers
36d72d0 The nature of the world is to be calm, and enhance and support life, and evil is an absence of the inclination of matter to be at peace. evil life nature peace world Gregory Maguire
5dc991f On the sea he wished to meet it, if meet it he must. He was not sure why this was, yet he had a terror of meeting the thing again on dry land. Out of the sea there rise storms and monsters, but no evil powers: evil is of earth. And there is no sea, no running of river or spring, in the dark land where once Ged had gone. Death is the dry place. death earthsea evil land sea water Ursula K. Le Guin
649959b Was Briony the only person who could hear the venom dripping from the woman's tongue? What good was beauty -- a mature beauty, but beauty nonetheless -- if it cloaked such a viperous soul? evil masks Tad Williams
21ede7f It isn't hard to find evil in this world. Evil is always more easily imagined than good, somehow. goodness evil good Gregory Maguire
83869b6 The law's a necessary evil--we canna be doing without it--but do ye not think it a poor substitute for conscience? evil law Diana Gabaldon
e26b99f God wants us to worry about our sins we sin; the devil wants us to worry we sin. God wants us to feel free after we repent (for we really are free then); the devil is a deceiver). The devil tempts us to cavalier pride before we sin and worrisome despair afterward, since pride and despair both separate us from God, and anything that separates us from God is the devil's friend and our enemy, while anything that brings us close to God is the devil's enemy and our friend. evil faith god prayer sin Peter Kreeft
7082b0e We're the villains you root for in the story. anti-heroes bad evil good story villians Melissa de la Cruz
4bbf438 Thus, death begets death; evil begets evil. evil Lloyd Alexander
b4fc3d7 Happiness is a prison, Evey. Happiness is the most insidious prison of all evil sad Alan Moore
2220dfe Aberrations of the human mind are to a large extent due to the obsessional pursuit of some part-truth, treated as if it were a whole truth. evil truth Arthur Koestler
1b2043d I did it thirty-five minutes ago. evil mastermind ozymandias plot Alan Moore
10d8b36 Once the soul has left the body it had to walk across a bridge as narrow as a knife edge, with paradise on the right and, on the left, a series of circles that lead down into the darkness inside the earth. Before crossing the bridge, each person had to place all his virtues in his right hand and all his sins in his left, and the imbalance between the two meant that the person always fell towards the side to which his actions on Earth had inclined him. evil good life Paulo Coelho
728be5f "Evil...doesn't mean doing things that have bad consequences for people. It means private thoughts and actions that are not to "the Christian majority's" private liking." christianity evil Richard Dawkins
d4d4c3d But, brothers, this biting of their toe-nails over what is the cause of badness is what turns me into a fine laughing malchick. They don't go into what is the cause of goodness, so why the other shop? If lewdies are good that's because they like it, and I wouldn't ever interfere with their pleasures, and so of the other shop. And I was patronizing the other shop. More, badness is of the self, the one, the you or me or our oddy knockies, and that self is made by old Bog or God and is his great pride and radosty. But the not-self cannot have the bad, meaning tbey of the government and the judges and the schools cannot allow the bad because they cannot allow the self. And is not our modern history, my brothers, the story of brave malenky selves fighting these big machines? I am serious with you brothers, over this. But what I do I do because I like to do. cause choice evil goodness Anthony Burgess
667b300 Thinking is man's only basic virtue, from which all the others proceed. And his basic vice, the source of all his evils, is that nameless act which all of you practice, but struggle never to admit: the act of blanking out, the willful suspension of one's consciousness, the refusal to think - not blindness, but the refusal to see; not ignorance, but the refusal to know. It is the act of unfocusing your mind and inducing an inner fog to escape the responsibility of judgment - on the unstated premise that a thing will not exist if only you refuse to identify it, that A will not be A so long as you do not pronounce the verdict 'It is. evil good john-galt life man mind morality morals objectivism philosophy pursuit-of-happiness rational reason think thinking truth values virtue wisdom Ayn Rand
8f9e059 The world turns and the world changes, But one thing does not change. In all of my years, one thing does not change, However you disguise it, this thing does not change: The perpetual struggle of Good and Evil. changeless disguise evil good struggle world T.S. Eliot
d3dafd8 The vilest of men and the wickedest of women likewise may do good from time to time, for love and compassion and pity may be found in even the blackest of hearts. compassion evil good heart love vile wicked George R.R. Martin
958e313 Man has been called a rational being, but rationality is a matter of choice -- and the alternative his nature offers him is: rational being or suicidal animal. Man has to be man -- by choice; he has to hold his life as a value -- by choice; he has to learn to sustain it -- by choice; he has to discover the values it requires and practice his virtues -- by choice. A code of values accepted by choice is a code of morality. choice evil good john-galt life man mind morality morals objectivism philosophy pursuit-of-happiness rational reason think thinking values virtue Ayn Rand
e24bd1c It can certainly be misleading to take the attributes of a movement, or the anxieties and contradictions of a moment, and to personalize or 'objectify' them in the figure of one individual. Yet ordinary discourse would be unfeasible without the use of portmanteau terms--like 'Stalinism,' say--just as the most scrupulous insistence on historical forces will often have to concede to the sheer personality of a Napoleon or a Hitler. I thought then, and I think now, that Osama bin Laden was a near-flawless personification of the mentality of a real force: the force of Islamic jihad. And I also thought, and think now, that this force absolutely deserves to be called evil, and that the recent decapitation of its most notorious demagogue and organizer is to be welcomed without reserve. Osama bin Laden's writings and actions constitute a direct negation of human liberty, and vent an undisguised hatred and contempt for life itself. adolf-hitler cults-of-personality death-of-osama-bin-laden evil history islam islamism jihad liberty napoleon osama-bin-laden religion september-11-attacks stalinism terrorism theocracy Christopher Hitchens
b412a98 "I have brought peace to this land, and security," he began. "And what of your soul, when you use the cleverness of argument to cloak such acts? Do you think that the peace of a thousand cancels out the unjust death of one single person? It may be desirable, it may win you praise from those who have happily survived you and prospered from your deeds, but you have committed ignoble acts, and have been too proud to own them. I have waited patiently here, hoping that you would come to me, for if you understood, then some of your acts would be mitigated. But instead you send me this manuscript, proud, magisterial, and demonstrating only that you have understood nothing at all." "I returned to public life on your advice, madam," he said stiffly. "Yes; I advised it. I said if learning must die it should do so with a friend by its bedside. Not an assassin." -- doctrine evil good injustice killing learning peace philosophy pride prosperity public-office soul values vice virtue Iain Pears
3a71a5f Independence is the recognition of the fact that yours is the responsibility of judgment and nothing can help you escape it--that no substitute can do your thinking--that the vilest form of self-abasement and self-destruction is the subordination of your mind to the mind of another, the acceptance of an authority over your brain, the acceptance of his assertions as facts, his say-so as truth, his edicts as middle-man between your consciousness and your existence. evil good happiness independence john-galt life man mind morality morals objectivism pain philosophy pursuit-of-happiness rational reason think thinking truth values virtue wisdom Ayn Rand
bd730a0 These are illusions of popular history which successful religion must promote: Evil men never prosper; only the brave deserve the fair; honesty is the best policy; actions speak louder than words; virtue always triumpths; a good deed is its own rewards; any bad human can be reformed; religious talismans protect one from demon possession; only females understand the ancient mysteries; the rich are doomed to unhappiness belief-system belief-systems beliefs dune dune-arrakis dune-house-atreides dune-messiah evil evil-men faith falsehood falsehoods good goodness historical historical-perspective history history-of-mankind history-of-thought justice-of-god moral moral-law morality morals religion religion-philosophy religion-spirituality religions religious religious-faith virtue virtues Frank Herbert
3297c43 Happiness is the successful state of life, pain is an agent of death. Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one's values. A morality that dares to tell you to find happiness in the renunciation of your happiness--to value the failure of your values--is an insolent negation of morality. evil good happiness john-galt life man mind morality morals objectivism philosophy pursuit-of-happiness rational reason think thinking values virtue Ayn Rand
d3c87a7 What is discovered may be abused, but that does not mean the discovery was evil. evil Fulton J. Sheen
9c425e3 Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action. If an organism fails in that action, it dies...It is only the concept of 'Life' that makes the concept of 'Value' possible. It is only to a living entity that things can be good or evil. evil good john-galt life man mind morality morals objectivism philosophy pursuit-of-happiness reason think thinking values virtue Ayn Rand
8984839 Know, my son, that the enemy will always be with you. He will be in the shadow of your dreams and in your living flesh, for he is the other part of yourself. There will be times when he will surround you with walls of darkness. But remember always that your soul is secure to you, for your soul is entire, and that he cannot enter your soul, for your soul is part of God. evil god soul Jane Yolen
b3fd359 The novelist Dumas would one day borrow features from both of his uncles, not to mention his grandfather, the acknowledged scoundrel, in fashioning the central villains of The Count of Monte Cristo. Reading court documents detailing the sordid unraveling of Charles's sham fortune, which would have devastating effects on his daughter and her unsuspecting husband, I couldn't help thinking that one of the interesting things about Dumas's villains is that, while greedy and unprincipled themselves, they produce children who can be innocent and decent. This was something that the writer understood very well from his own family. count-of-monte evil villains Tom Reiss
6e9dd62 At Dachau. We had a wonderful pool for the garrison children. It was even heated. But that was before we were transferred. Dachau was ever so much nicer than Auschwitz. But then, it was in the Reich. See my trophies there. The one in the middle, the big one. That was presented to me by the Reich Youth Leader himself, Baldur von Schirach. Let me show you my scrapbook. banality dachau evil hate holocaust swimming third-reich William Styron
96fd4c2 Just because something isn't good doesn't mean it's bad. book characters crime depth ethics evil good life literary lonely misunderstood novel sad spooky truth Rebecca McNutt
d4aa10e Rationality is the recognition of the fact that existence exists, that nothing can alter the truth and nothing can take precedence over that act of perceiving it, which is thinking--that the mind is one's only judge of values and one's only guide of action--that reason is an absolute that permits no compromise--that a concession to the irrational invalidates one's consciousness and turns it from the task of perceiving to the task of faking reality--that the alleged short-cut to knowledge, which is faith, is only a short-circuit destroying the mind--that the acceptance of a mystical invention is a wish for the annihilation of existence and, properly, annihilates one's consciousness. evil good happiness john-galt life man mind morality morals objectivism pain philosophy pursuit-of-happiness rational reason think thinking truth values virtue wisdom Ayn Rand
4c555ad Are you seeking to know what is wrong with the world? All the disasters that have wrecked your world, came from your leaders' attempt to evade the fact that A is A. All the secret evil you dread to face within you and all the pain you have ever endured, came from your own attempt to evade the fact that A is A. evil good john-galt life man mind morality morals objectivism philosophy pursuit-of-happiness rational reason think thinking truth values virtue wisdom Ayn Rand
9b36092 "A son for a son, heh. But that's a grandson...and he never was much use." --Walder Frey" evil murder villain George R.R. Martin
0b9e988 "Then why do we do so many bad things? He sighed. "Because one thing God gave us--and I'm afraid it's at times a little too much--is free will. Freedom to choose. I believe he gave us everything needed to build a beautiful world, if we choose wisely." evil free-will freedom Mitch Albom
23f346e The games are always been played, and no one plays the games like me. You just have to be the best. And I usually am. corruption deceit evil manipulation mind-games twisted Irvine Welsh
1fff5a2 We've heard them all talk about Dust, and they're so afraid of it, and you know what? We believed them, even though we could see that what they were doing was wicked and evil and wrong... We thought Dust must be bad too, because they were grown up and they said so. But what if it isn't? What if it's--' She said breathlessly, 'Yeah! What if it's really good... evil good good-and-evil original-sin sin Philip Pullman
4b795b6 It will never end. Till the world ends in the chaos of Ragnarok, we will fight for our women, for our land, and for our homes. Some Christians speak of peace, of the evil of war, and who does not want peace? But then some crazed warrior comes screaming his god's filthy name into your face and his only ambitions are to kill you, to rape your wife, to enslave your daughters, and take your home, and so you must fight. chaos christians daughters end enslave evil face fight god home kill must name peace ragnarok rape take war warrior wife world Bernard Cornwell
b800ada Generalization is a natural human mental process, and many generalizations are true--in average. What often does promote evil behavior is the lazy, nasty habit of believing that generalizations have anything at all to do with individuals. evil generalizations individual individuals stereotypes David Brin
04b71c6 "Was he he handsome?" she asked with a sly smirk. "Very. He is still, I think." beelzebub cunning devil evil hideous-beauty wicked Nancy E. Turner
ccf5635 "We are going to your father," Mrs. Which said. "But where is he?" Meg went over to Mrs. Which and stamped as though she were as young as Charles Wallace. Mrs. Whatsit answered in a voice that was low but quite firm. "On a planet that has given in. So you must prepare to be very strong." darkness evil resolve strength Madeleine L'Engle
48b15af His was an impenetrable darkness. I looked at him as you peer down at a man who is lying at the bottom of a precipice where the sun never shines. evil Joseph Conrad
f1d7b06 The most evil institution in the world is the Roman Catholic Church. catholic-church church evil institution roman-catholic H.G. Wells
5900aae "I've seen a lot of stuff... maybe I've seen too much. I see most humans in a bad light because I've seen what they can do, how evil they can be... I've seen the Holocaust and I've seen Jonestown, I've seen the Vietnam War and I've seen Hiroshima... I've seen the Chernobyl disaster... I've seen the World Trade Center attack... I've been alive too long, over a hundred years is a long time to be alive," Alecto sighed, staring at the cigarette he was holding." alive chernobyl death disaster dying earth evil grief hazardous hippie holocaust human jonestown kami lonely nature nuclear personification pollution sad smog steel vietnam-war Rebecca McNutt
6cb5df8 "Psychology's service to U.S. national security has produced a variant of what the psychiatrist Robert Lifton has called, in his study of Nazi doctors, a "Faustian bargain." In this case, the price paid has been the American Psychological Association's collective silence, ethical "numbing," and, over time, historical amnesia. 3 Indeed, Lifton emphasizes that "the Nazis were not the only ones to involve doctors in evil"; in defense of this argument, he cites the Cold War "role of ...American physicians and psychologists employed by the Central Intelligence Agency...for unethical medical and psychological experiments involving drugs and mind manipulation." 4" cia cold-war collective-silence conspiracy-of-silence ethical-violations evil faustian-bargain human-rights-abuse human-rights-violations mind-control nazi-doctors psychological-manipulation selective-amnesia torture traumatic-amnesia unethical-treatment Alfred W. McCoy
a60753c All his court were cast down in slumber, and all the fires faded and were quenched; but the Silmarils in the crown on Morgoth's head blazed forth suddenly with a radiance of white flame; and the burden of that crown and of the jewels bowed down his head, as though the world were set upon it, laden with a weight of care, of fear, and of desire, that even the will of Morgoth could not support. Then Luthien catching up her winged robe sprang into the air, and her voice came dropping down like rain into pools, profound and dark. She cast her cloak before his eyes, and set upon him a dream, dark as the outer Void where once he walked alone. evil J.R.R. Tolkien
d375213 This exists. It can be seen. It can be touched. These in pace, these dungeons, these iron hinges, these necklets, that lofty peep-hole on a level with the river's current, that box of stone closed with a lid of granite like a tomb, with this difference, that the dead man here was a living being, that soil which is but mud, that vault hole, those oozing walls, --what declaimers! evil hypocrisy suffering torture Victor Hugo
1adb6c9 People never like pollution, it has become very wrong to like pollution at all. But just like there are good and bad things about people, there are good and bad things about pollution. If people were pollution we would get rid of anyone who was different, anyone who was considered an inconvenience... but we'd be getting rid of a life, a lot of lives... because we didn't like them. If pollution was a person would we still be trying to get rid of it? Would we have environmentalists still complaining and protesting and trying to get rid of all pollution? animals canada dangerous death earth environment environmentalism evil garbage help hippie hope human life litter mental-illness people plants pollution scary smog water Rebecca McNutt
391509e "Pope Alexander smiled. He seemed more amused with the story than horrified. "The Baglioni are true believers," he said. "They believe in paradise. Such a great gift. How otherwise can man bear this moral life? Unfortunately, such a belief also gives evil men the courage to commit great crimes in the name of good and God." borgias evil gift god good mario-puzo moral-life paradise Mario Puzo
99a4b06 What is evil?' asked the Fiend evil existential-questions philosophical Joseph Delaney
7166bbc There are people on whom even clean linen looks indecent. evil indecency malice people Fyodor Dostoyevsky
e5e95ef Let me be cursed, let me be base and vile, but let me also kiss the hem of that garment in which my God is clothed; let me be following the devil at the same time, but still I am also your son, Lord, and I love you, and I feel a joy without which the world cannot stand and be. devil evil faith god joy love Fyodor Dostoyevsky
c7c11e1 "It was dark now, and broodingly sluggish. Like something supine waiting to spring, with just the tip of its tail twitching. Leaves stood still on the trees. An evil green star glinted in the black sky like a hostile eye, like an evil spying eye. ("For The Rest Of Her Life")" evil night omen ominous star threat Cornell Woolrich
9fa5020 If I beat my grandmother to death to-morrow in the middle of Battersea Park, you may be perfectly certain that people will say everything about it except the simple and fairly obvious fact that it is wrong. Some will call it insane; that is, will accuse it of a deficiency of intelligence. This is not necessarily true at all. You could not tell whether the act was unintelligent or not unless you knew my grandmother. Some will call it vulgar, disgusting, and the rest of it; that is, they will accuse it of a lack of manners. Perhaps it does show a lack of manners; but this is scarcely its most serious disadvantage. Others will talk about the loathsome spectacle and the revolting scene; that is, they will accuse it of a deficiency of art, or aesthetic beauty. This again depends on the circumstances: in order to be quite certain that the appearance of the old lady has definitely deteriorated under the process of being beaten to death, it is necessary for the philosophical critic to be quite certain how ugly she was before. Another school of thinkers will say that the action is lacking in efficiency: that it is an uneconomic waste of a good grandmother. But that could only depend on the value, which is again an individual matter. The only real point that is worth mentioning is that the action is wicked, because your grandmother has a right not to be beaten to death. But of this simple moral explanation modern journalism has, as I say, a standing fear. It will call the action anything else--mad, bestial, vulgar, idiotic, rather than call it sinful. death efficiency evil good insanity journalism manners G.K. Chesterton
ef74bb9 They will say that the Universe has no purpose and no plan, that since a hundred suns explode every year in our Galaxy, at this very moment some race is dying in the depths of space. Whether that race has done good or evil during its lifetime will make no difference in the end: there is no divine justice, for there is no God. evil galaxy god good justice race space sun universe Arthur C. Clarke
16b3969 Classical mythology is a catalogue of indescribable cruelty: [...] It is a world dominated by evil, where even the most beautiful beings carry out atrocities. evil greek-mythology on-ugliness Umberto Eco
6cda9f4 ... on the historical scale, the damages wrought by individual violence for selfish motives are insignificant compared to the holocausts resulting from self-transcending devotion to collectively shared belief-systems. It is derived from primitive identification instead of mature social integration; it entails the partial surrender of personal responsibility and produces the quasi-hypnotic phenomena of group-psychology. depersonalization disease evil violence Arthur Koestler
d58ad88 Die Menschen tun das Bose nie so vollstandig und begeistert, wie wenn sie es aus religioser Uberzeugung tun. evil religion Umberto Eco
63d830a He had met this sort of white man before, earnest and believing what came out of their mouths. The veracity of their words was another matter, but at least they believed them. The southern white man was spat from the loins of the devil and there was no way to forecast his next evil act. belief evil race-relations south southerners truth white-people Colson Whitehead
bdf5fbd "Now that little problem of yours, this business of not knowing good men from bad men and villains from heroes and so forth...There's still plenty for you to do. And you'll do it. And when you fall in love and have a mistress or a wife and children to look after, it will all seem easier." He opened the door but stopped on the threshold. "Surround yourself with human beings, my dear. They are easier to fight for than principles." He laughed. "But don't let me down and become human yourself. We would lose such a wonderful machine." With a wave of his hand he shut the door." evil james-bond machine principals Ian Fleming
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