quotations about evil
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
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
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
Devil inside
The devil inside
Every single one of us
The devil inside
INXS
"Devil Inside"
There is good in all. Yes! we all believe it: not a man in the depth of his vanity but will yield assent. But do you not all, in practice, daily, hourly deny it? A beggar passes you in the street: dirty, ragged, importunate. "Ah! he has a bad look," and your pocket is safe. He starves--and he steals. "I thought he was bad." You educated him in the State Prison. He does not improve even in this excellent school. "He is," says the gaoler, "thoroughly bad." He continues his course of crime. All that is bad in him having by this time been made apparent to himself, his friends, and the world, he has only to confirm the decision, and at length we hear when he has reached his last step. "Ah! no wonder--there was never any good in him. Hang him!"
T. S. ARTHUR
"Good In All", Friends and Neighbors
Evil eyes look out for occasion, therefore give none.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
Urith
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
In some way the secret vice exhales its poison; and the evil passion, however cunningly masked, stains through to the surface.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
Evils in the journey of life are like the hills which alarm travellers upon their road; they both appear great at a distance, but when we approach them we find that they are far less insurmountable than we had conceived.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
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 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've got evil in me as much as anyone, some desires that scare me. Even if I don't give in to them, just having them scares the living bejesus out of me sometimes. I'm no saint, the way you kid about. But I've always walked the line, walked that goddamned line. It's a mean mother of a line, straight and narrow, sharp as a razor, cuts right into you when you walk it long enough. You're always bleeding on that line, and sometimes you wonder why you don't just step off and walk in the cool grass.
DEAN KOONTZ
Dark Rivers of the Heart
Evils draw men together.
ARISTOTLE
Rhetoric
Evil's a word that gets tossed around a lot. Like "great". Or "awesome".
LOLA
"B.C.", Moonlight
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
The Lord is known by his justice; the wicked are ensnared by the work of their hands.
BIBLE
Psalms 9:16
Evil wishes, like chickens, come home to roost.
AESOP
"The Bee and Jupiter", Aesop's Fables
Good and evil and beauty and ugliness are only ornamental fruits of perspective, whose sole value lies in their linkage to what chance made our fathers think and feel, and whose finer details are different for every race and culture.
H. P. LOVECRAFT
"The Silver Key"
The problem was you had to keep choosing between one evil or another, and no matter what you chose, they sliced a little more off you, until there was nothing left.
CHARLES BUKOWSKI
Ham on Rye
One may smile, and smile, and be a villain!
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Hamlet