quotations about evil
The truth is that most of us see what we are looking for in this world. If we are looking for evil we find it. The reason is not merely that evil exists all around us. There is another reason, far more potent. By looking for evil in our fellow creatures we bring out evil either from them or from ourselves, perhaps from both.
JOHN DANIEL BARRY
"The Imaginary People", Reactions and Other Essays
The small man thinks that small acts of goodness are of no benefit, and does not do them; and that small deeds of evil do no harm, and does not refrain from them. Hence, his wickedness becomes so great that it cannot be concealed, and his guilt so great that it cannot be pardoned.
CONFUCIUS
The Wisdom of Confucius
When a man hath established a Throne of Judgment in his own soul and is able to put a difference between Good and Evil, Right and Wrong: then he must reform himself according to such knowledge and always hold himself to that which his Judgment tells him is Good and Right.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
We return evil for evil, in which there is no sin, for it is necessary to pay a wicked man in his own coin.
CHANAKYA
Vridda-Chanakya
It is the business of a man, either to prevent an evil that threatens him, or, when it is come, to qualify and alleviate its malignity; or put on a masculine brave spirit, and to resolve to endure it.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
When there exists anywhere a state of suffering, a wrong, a condition of affairs that men of feeling deplore and that troubles the conscience of the upright, to become resigned to it is wicked. Although the evil flaunts itself before our eyes, and no remedy is in sight, we must go and seek a remedy. In the creation of the God of Justice, evil can be but a transitory state.
CHARLES WAGNER
Justice
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.
PLATO
Lysis
Those who choose not to empathize enable real monsters, for without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves we collude with it through our apathy.
J. K. ROWLING
speech, Jun. 5, 2008
The Lord is known by his justice; the wicked are ensnared by the work of their hands.
BIBLE
Psalms 9:16
The evil which does me no harm is like the good which in no wise avails me.
LEONARDO DA VINCI
Thoughts on Art and Life
I believed in love, but I believed in evil too. Neither love nor evil conquers all, but evil cheats more.
LAURELL K. HAMILTON
Cerulean Sins
Evil is the canker of life.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
As long as what you are afraid of is something evil, you may still hope that the good may come to your rescue. But suppose you struggle through to the good and find that it also is dreadful? How if food itself turns out to be the very thing you can't eat, and home the very place you can't live, and your very comforter the person who makes you uncomfortable? Then, indeed, there is no rescue possible: the last card has been played.
C.S. LEWIS
Perelandra
Evil eyes look out for occasion, therefore give none.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
Urith
What we call evil, it seems to me, is simply ignorance bumping its head in the dark.
HENRY FORD
Theosophist Magazine, Feb. 1930
One thing I've learned from centuries of combat is that no matter how thoroughly you think you exterminate the evil, it comes creeping back like a cockroach.
DR. FATE
"The Hand of Fate", Superman
Recognition of the reality of evil necessarily relativizes the good, and the evil likewise, converting both into halves of a paradoxical whole.
CARL JUNG
Memories
When justice is done, it brings joy to the righteous but terror to evildoers.
BIBLE
Proverbs 21:15
One may smile, and smile, and be a villain!
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Hamlet
For hence I believed Evil also to be some such kind of substance, and to have its own foul and hideous bulk; whether gross, which they called earth, or thin and subtile (like the body of the air), which they imagine to be some malignant mind, creeping through that earth. And because a piety, such as it was, constrained me to believe that the good God never created any evil nature, I conceived two masses, contrary to one another, both unbounded, but the evil narrower, the good more expansive.
ST. AUGUSTINE
Confessions