c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
I have no idea how long Quisser was gone from the table. My attention became fully absorbed by the other faces in the club and the deep anxiety they betrayed to me, an anxiety that was not of the natural, existential sort but one that was caused by peculiar concerns of an uncanny nature. What a season is upon us, these faces seemed to say. And no doubt their voices would have spoken directly of certain peculiar concerns had they not been intimidated into weird equivocations and double entendres by the fear of falling victim to the same kind of unnatural affliction that had made so much trouble in the mind of the art critic Stuart Quisser. Who would be next? What could a person say these days, or even think, without feeling the dread of repercussion from powerfully connected groups and individuals? I could almost hear their voices asking, "Why here, why now?" But of course they could have just as easily been asking, "Why not here, why not now?" It would not occur to this crowd that there were no special rules involved; it would not occur to them, even though they were a crowd of imaginative artists, that the whole thing was simply a matter of random, purposeless terror that converged upon a particular place at a particular time for no particular reason. On the other hand, it would also not have occurred to them that they might have wished it all upon themselves, that they might have had a hand in bringing certain powerful forces and connections into our district simply by wishing them to come. They might have wished and wished for an unnatural evil to fall upon them but, for a while at least, nothing happened. Then the wishing stopped, the old wishes were forgotten yet at the same time gathered in strength, distilling themselves into a potent formula (who can say!), until one day the terrible season began. Because had they really told the truth, this artistic crowd might also have expressed what a sense of meaning (although of a negative sort), not to mention the vigorous thrill (although of an excruciating type), this season of unnatural evil had brought to their lives.("Gas Station Carnivals")
— Thomas Ligotti, The Nightmare Factory
What good were fate and fortune anyway? If there was some sort of plan she was supposed to follow, it was unreadable to her and impossible to stick to. She was tired of fate, which was probably just a made-up concept invented by humans to feel like something or someone was guiding them anyway. God, spirits, cookies, whatever. She was so sick of buying into the idea that there was actually meaning behind any of this. It was just her, blind and alone, making a mess of her life on her own, thank you very much.
— Andrea Lochen
What is the likelihood, of winning the lottery, then lose it all the next day when you step out your front door and get struck by lightning? Probably, very slim, but then anything is possible.
— Anthony Liccione
It seems when Opportunity knocks, Fate shows up to open the door.
— Anthony Liccione
Moth: I gave you my life. Flame: I allowed you to kiss me.
— Hazrat Inayat Khan
Because I think you're right. You can make a difference." He told me experiences were kind of like fate, and fate usually came in the form of a test. He told me fate liked to be worshiped. It liked to see us fall on out knees before it offered to help us up..." ♥
— Lauren Oliver, Requiem
You don’t tap on the Devil’s shoulder unless you’re willing to dance to his tune.
— Sherrilyn Kenyon, One Silent Night
Despite all the other factors that had contributed to my fate, in the end it was my decision that destroyed my life. And all the hurt I was enduring now was my doing. The blame rested solely with me.
— Brodi Ashton, Everneath
The pattern glitters with cruelty. The blue beads are colored with fish blood, the reds with powdered heart. The beads collect in borders of mercy. The yellows are dyed with the ocher of silence. There is no telling which twin will fall asleep first, allowing the other's colors to dominate, for how long. The design grows, the overlay deepens. The beaders have no other order at the heart of their being. Do you know that the beads are sewn onto the fabric of the earth with endless strands of human muscle, human sinew, human hair? We are as crucial to this making as other animals. No more and no less important than the deer.
— Louise Erdrich, The Antelope Wife
A lot of things should have been, Zigmund, but they aren’t. Are you going to be miserable about the things you cannot change, or do something about the things you can?
— Melika Dannese Lux, Corcitura
like a soulmate he's your penguin
— Christina Perri
You saw me bludgeoned by circumstance.Lost, injured, hurt by chance.I screamed to the heavens....loudly screamed....Trying to change our nightmares into dreams...
— Maya Angelou, Poems
It is possible to reclaim your future, to build a happy life despite an imperfect past. We can order the universe to our will and mind.
— Katherine Marsh
Fate doesn’t care about family. When the time is up, she nicks at the thread
— Cecilia Robert, Reaper's Novice
Is not our capacity to choose, to chase, to dream of becoming other than we are, more powerful then the patterns of the stars?
— Katherine Marsh, Jepp, Who Defied the Stars
The gene contains a single 'word', repeated over and over again: CAG, CAG, CAG, CAG ... The repetition continues sometimes just six times, sometimes thirty, sometimes more than a hundred times. Your destiny, your sanity and your life hang by the thread of this repetition. If the 'word' is repeated thirty-five times or fewer, you will be fine.Most of us have about ten to fifteen repeats. If the 'word' is repeated thirty-nine times or more, you will in mid-life slowly start to lose your balance, grow steadily more incapable of looking after yourself and die prematurely.
— Matt Ridley, Genome: the Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters
You ever get the feeling your life is a string festooned with bells and tie4d to hundreds of others you don't know anything about? And that sometimes somebody pulls their string, and your bells ring?" Gary looked at me a long moment before rather gently saying, "Yes and no, darlin'. We all get that feeling from time to time. Difference is, with you, it could be real.
— C.E. Murphy, Raven Calls
Life gives us the music but we can raise or lower the volume as we like 
— Natalia Lizardo
Ah, cruel fate, how swiftly joy and sorrow alternate!
— Raimbaut de Vaqueyras
All things are subject to decay and when fate summons, monarchs must obey.
— John Dryden
Cold comradeship do stars provide.They light the closer, inner sideOf night's vast weight, which, chill and clear,Pulls on us like some puppeteer.Its unseen threads to heads and heartsAttached, it acts us through our parts,From birth's first cry to bent old age,Upon our distant, tiny stage.
— McKenzie Bodkin, The Water Mage's Daughter: A Novel of Love, Magic and War in Verse
Everything in Tom's cathedral looked as if it was meant to be. Perhaps her life was like that, everything foreordained in a grand design, and she was like a foolish builder who wanted a waterfall in the chancel.
— Ken Follett, The Pillars of the Earth
He looked left and she turned right ment to be together but not that night...
— Train
Beware what you speak,' said the Merlin very softly, 'for indeed the words we speak make shadows of what is to come, and by speaking them we bring them to pass, my king.
— Marion Zimmer Bradley, The Mists of Avalon
As you grow older, it becomes harder to feel 100 percent happy; you learn all the things that can go wrong, you become superstitious about tempting fate, about bringing disaster upon your life by accidentally feeling too good one day.
— Douglas Coupland
Each of us carries a sleeping tiger inside, and we can’t predict when that cat will wake, stretch, and sharpen its claws.
— Holly Robinson, Sleeping Tigers
I have chosen a life that depends on one’s awareness that every breath may be his last, every step may bring his downfall, and every word may stir betrayal. In truth, I must live in conscious ignorance of the mere thread that holds my life aloft, trusting that God alone has the power to sever it, and that He will do so only when my work on earth is complete.
— Nicole Sager, The Isle of Arcrea
What is not brought to consciousness, comes to us as fate.
— C.G. Jung
He had to accept the fate of every newcomer to a small town where there are plenty of tongues that gossip and few minds that think.
— Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
Their fate rested entirely on me. I could save them by telling the truth. I could destroy them by lying. No one should have that much power.
— Neal Shusterman, Red Rider's Hood
Why can’t I remember that not once have I ever seen a coin, whether grimy copper or bright gold, that had but one side.
— Andrew Levkoff, A Mixture of Madness
My death granted immortality.With one look, I knew he’d be my undoing…” Forgotten, book #1 of the Fate Trilogy
— Sarah J. Pepper
How fate is stubborn and holds to habit.
— Susan Abulhawa, Mornings in Jenin
There is so much about my fate that I cannot control, but other things do fall under my jurisdiction. There are certain lottery tickets I can buy, thereby increasing my odds of finding contentment. I can decide how I spend my time, whom I interact with, whom share my body and life and money and energy with.
— Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love
What is life if you don't have a dream to chase?
— Joanne McClean
One has to be at least as ancient as I am now to see that if you try to make sense of life, if you look for patterns and meaning, not only are you bound to be disappointed, you are likely to waste a good deal of precious time.
— Andrew Levkoff, A Mixture of Madness
Fate rolls with laughter in the distance.
— Trish Millburn
Perhaps Fate laid out your life for you like a dress on a bed, and you could either wear it or go naked.
— Laini Taylor
Fate controls only the weak, Your Highness. The strong mould the providence the want
— Amish Tripathi, The Secret of the Nagas
Ka was a wheel
—  it was also a net from which none ever escaped.
All this was new to me. Life takes us by surprise and orders us to move towards the unknown - even when we don't want to and we think we don't need to.
— Paulo Coelho, By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept
Fate is but a dying wish... Of a world that is beyond control. Like a single lotus flower, the future blossoms; Upon its petals, two people shall be free.
— Youka Nitta, Embracing Love, Vol. 5
You can't ascribe great cosmic significance to a simple earthly event. Coincidence. That's all anything ever is. Nothing more than coYou can't ascribe great cosmic significance to a simple earthly event. Coincidence. That's all anything ever is. Nothing more than co
— Scott Neustadter, (500) Days of Summer: The Shooting Script
All we can do is pray, Ma, pray.No, Child, these are the deeds of human beings. Planned by the brains of humans, and by the warped hearts of humans. It is to people we must speak our words. God has never sided with the defeated.
— Pramoedya Ananta Toer, Child of All Nations
Roland of Gilead responded as he ever had and ever would when such useless, mystifying questions were raised: 'Ka.
— Stephen King, Everything's Eventual: 14 Dark Tales
He talked about luck and fate and numbers coming up, yet he never ventured a nickel at the casinos because he knew the house had all the percentages. And beneath his pessimism, his bleak conviction that all the machinery was rigged against him, at the bottom of his soul was a faith that he was going to outwit it, that by carefully watching the signs he was going to know when to dodge and be spared. It was fatalism with a loophole, and all you had to do to make it work was never miss a sign. Survival by coordination, as it were. The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but to those who can see it coming and jump aside. Like a frog evading a shillelagh in a midnight marsh.
— Hunter S. Thompson, The Rum Diary
Find then follow the path that enables you to live the life you want to live. Don't be blow by the winds of fate. Don't be a creation of circumstances.
— Steven Redhead, The Solution
Often subtle clues are not obvious enough for the stubborn or stupid. This is when God stops throwing crumbs and starts throwing the whole piece of bread. If you step on moldy bread then you know you have waited too long.
— Shannon L. Alder
LIfe is just a game of chance, a dance with fate if you let it be so. Or you could chose to play by your rules to win.
— Steven Redhead, The Solution
I understood that fate could not be eluded forever; it came on leathery wings, swooping through the darkness like the bats in the orchards.
— Alice Hoffman, The Dovekeepers
If there's to be damnation, she had said, let it be of my choosing, not theirs. He knew a little about damnation himself… and he had an idea that the lessons, far from being done, were just beginning.
— Stephen King, Everything's Eventual: 14 Dark Tales
Time whips up cream for those who are ready for dessert.
— Lara Biyuts, La Arme Blanche
Every decent man in America ought to swoon with joy for the opportunity to crush with his heel the woolly head of this black lizard, to keep him from scuttling on his belly farther over the earth and spitting forth his venom of death!
— Richard Wright, Native Son
Luck Doesn't Exist in one's world, its the unexplainable and the unexpected that makes some question fate
— Elliot Kesebonye
You cannot force things apart that are bound at the heart.
— Ashly Lorenzana
The best luck always happens to people who don't need it.
— Robert Penn Warren, All the King's Men
Fate will unwind as it must!
— Burton Raffel, Beowulf
This is where I have always been coming to. Since my time began. And when I go away from here, this will be the mid-point, to which everything ran, before, and from which everything will run. But now, my love, we are here, we are now, and those other times are running elsewhere.
— A.S. Byatt, Possession
Every person makes a difference. And the choices we make, the things we do—they matter.” She looked up into Will’s eyes. “And now I do believe in fate. Especially the kind we make ourselves.
— Maurissa Guibord, Warped
Quand le doigt montre le ciel, l’imbécile regarde le doigt. [When a finger is pointing up to the sky, only a fool looks at the finger.]
— Jean-Pierre Jeunet
To what extent does anybody control his destiny? Life is very much like falling of the edge of a cliff. You have complete freedom to make all the choices you want to take on your way down. My characters choose to yearn and not lose hope even when the odds are completely against them. It doesn't make the landing at the end of that fall any less painful but, somehow, it helps them keep a little dignity their bone broken body.
— Etgar Keret
I've heard fate talked of. It's not a word I use. I think we make our own choices. I think how we live our lives is our own doing, and we cannot fully hope on dreams and stars. But dreams and stars can guide us, perhaps. And the heart's voice is a strong one. Always is.
— Susan  Fletcher, Corrag
It's fate, but fate just gives us a nudge in the right direction onthe fast lane, I guarantee she doesn't have her hands in your pockets while she's doing it
— Shelly Crane, Defiance
I too saw the wooden horse blocking the stars.
— Derek Walcott, The Odyssey
It was quite a wedding and as I stood there watching I realized something I'd forgotten a long time ago. Sometimes in life there really are bonds formed that can never be broken. Sometimes you really can find that one person who will stand by you no matter what. Maybe you will find it in a spouse and celebrate it with your dream wedding. But there's also the chance that the one person you can count on for a lifetime, the one person who knows you sometimes better than you know yourself is the same person who's been standing beside you all along.
— Greg DePaul
Don't let circumstances determine your fate. Choose your fate and mold circumstances to fit your fate of choice.
— D.B. Harrop
She had never believed in fate. She still did not. It would be nonsense of freedom of will and choice, and it was through such freedom that we worked our way through life and learned what we needed to learn. But sometimes, it seemed to her, there was something, some sign, to nudge one along in a certain direction. What one chose to do with that nudge was up to that person.
— Mary Balogh, The Proposal
Would the truth be silenced, or would it try to break throughMeaning if someone loves you and its meant to be but for unknown reasons it seems to be over would you somehow get fatalistic messages that would hint at you the truth behind the relationship- are forces at play to try and waken you up to the idea that you're actually meant to be and should be together?
— Stephenie Meyer, New Moon
Delphine witnessed awful things occurring to other humans. Worse than that, she was powerless to alter their fate. It would be that way all her life--disasters, falling like chairs all around her, falling so close they disarranged her hair, but not touching her.
— Louise Erdrich, The Master Butchers Singing Club
The trigger has been squeezed, the deathly mechanism has been enabled, the fatal course of a bullet has been set. No amount of bleating or praying or wailing of cajoling can halt it or stall it or call it back.
— Nicola Barker, The Yips
The sun's rays don't bother me. No they cast down such a wonderful heat. Masking beauty, by a terrible fate.
— Sara Quin
But that I should have ended up in a place like this seems too custom-made a nightmare to be the work of mere ill fortune.
— Zoë Heller, Everything You Know
People who claim that they're evil are usually no worse than the rest of us... It's people who claim that they're good, or any way better than the rest of us, that you have to be wary of.
— Gregory Maguire, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
Between two evils, I always pick the one I never tried before.
— Mae West
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
— Edmund Burke
Man is the cruelest animal.
— Friedrich Nietzsche
Never open the door to a lesser evil, for other and greater ones invariably slink in after it.
— Baltasar Gracián, The Art of Worldly Wisdom
We all have a Monster within; the difference is in degree, not in kind.
— Douglas Preston, The Monster of Florence
How easy it is to judge rightly after one sees what evil comes from judging wrongly.
— Elizabeth Gaskell, Wives and Daughters
If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?
— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956
Evil isn’t the real threat to the world. Stupid is just as destructive as Evil, maybe more so, and it’s a hell of a lot more common. What we really need is a crusade against Stupid. That might actually make a difference.
— Jim Butcher, Vignette
But would you kindly ponder this question: What would your good do if evil didn't exist, and what would the earth look like if all the shadows disappeared? After all, shadows are cast by things and people. Here is the shadow of my sword. But shadows also come from trees and living beings. Do you want to strip the earth of all trees and living things just because of your fantasy of enjoying naked light? You're stupid.
— Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita
I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.
— Mahatma Gandhi, The Essential Gandhi: An Anthology of His Writings on His Life, Work, and Ideas
Most of the evil in this world is done by people with good intentions.
— T.S. Eliot
Stupidity is the same as evil if you judge by the results.
— Margaret Atwood, Surfacing
Murderers are not monsters, they're men. And that's the most frightening thing about them.
— Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones
Let's just say you may regret that second piece of cake.' Oh my God. Regret cake? Whatever was about to happen must be truly evil.
— Rachel Hawkins, Hex Hall
It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.
— J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
Animals don't behave like men,' he said. 'If they have to fight, they fight; and if they have to kill they kill. But they don't sit down and set their wits to work to devise ways of spoiling other creatures' lives and hurting them. They have dignity and animality.
— Richard Adams, Watership Down
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.
— J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.
— Blaise Pascal, Pensées
Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer
—  nothing is more difficult than to understand him.
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. . . .
— J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Most of the bad guys in the real world don't know that they are bad guys. You don't get a flashing warning sign that you're about to damn yourself. It sneaks up on you when you aren't looking.
— Jim Butcher
Son, the greatest trick the Devil pulled was convincing the world there was only one of him.
— David Wong, John Dies at the End
There must have been a moment, at the beginning, were we could have said -- no. But somehow we missed it. 
— Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
Evil is a point of view. We are immortal. And what we have before us are the rich feasts that conscience cannot appreciate and mortal men cannot know without regret. God kills, and so shall we; indiscriminately He takes the richest and the poorest, and so shall we; for no creatures under God are as we are, none so like Him as ourselves, dark angels not confined to the stinking limits of hell but wandering His earth and all its kingdoms.
— Anne Rice, Interview with the Vampire
I simply want to live
—  to cause no evil to anyone but myself.
Tolerance becomes a crime when applied to evil.
— Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
— Robert J.  Hanlon
Who are you then?" "I am part of that power which eternally wills evil and eternally works good.
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust: First Part
The concept of portraying evil and then destroying it - I know this is considered mainstream, but I think it is rotten. This idea that whenever something evil happens someone particular can be blamed and punished for it, in life and in politics is hopeless.
— Hayao Miyazaki
Evil is unspectacular and always human,And shares our bed and eats at our own table ....
— W.H. Auden, Collected Poems
The reason for evil in the world is that people are not able to tell their stories.
— C.G. Jung
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.
— Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousand fold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations.
— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956
God created things which had free will. That means creatures which can go wrong or right. Some people think they can imagine a creature which was free but had no possibility of going wrong, but I can't. If a thing is free to be good it's also free to be bad. And free will is what has made evil possible. Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. A world of automata -of creatures that worked like machines- would hardly be worth creating. The happiness which God designs for His higher creatures is the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to Him and to each other in an ecstasy of love and delight compared with which the most rapturous love between a man and a woman on this earth is mere milk and water. And for that they've got to be free.Of course God knew what would happen if they used their freedom the wrong way: apparently, He thought it worth the risk. (...) If God thinks this state of war in the universe a price worth paying for free will -that is, for making a real world in which creatures can do real good or harm and something of real importance can happen, instead of a toy world which only moves when He pulls the strings- then we may take it it is worth paying.
— C.S. Lewis, The Case for Christianity
What would your good do if evil didn't exist, and what would the earth look like if all the shadows disappeared?
— Mikhail Bulgakov
Demons are like obedient dogs
—  they come when they are called.
More evil gets done in the name of righteousness than any other way.
— Glen Cook, Dreams of Steel
And what constitutes evil, real evil, is the taking of a single human life. Whether a man would die tomorrow or the day after or eventually... it doesn't matter. Because if God does not exist, then life... every second of it... Is all we have.
— Anne Rice, Interview with the Vampire
Hell wasn't a major reservoir of evil, any more then Heaven, in Crowley's opinion, was a fountain of goodness; they were just sides in the great cosmic chess game. Where you found the real McCoy, the real grace and the real heart-stopping evil, was right inside the human mind.
— Terry Pratchett, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch
In the beginning there was only a small amount of injustice abroad in the world, but everyone who came afterwards added their portion, always thinking it was very small and unimportant, and look where we have ended up today.
— Paulo Coelho, The Devil and Miss Prym
There is an old illusion. It is called good and evil.
— Friedrich Nietzsche
Ayn Rand's 'philosophy' is nearly perfect in its immorality, which makes the size of her audience all the more ominous and symptomatic as we enter a curious new phase in our society.... To justify and extol human greed and egotism is to my mind not only immoral, but evil.
— Gore Vidal
Hell is paved with good intentions.
— Samuel Johnson, The Life of Samuel Johnson LL.D. Vol 2
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.
— Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Angel
No evil dooms us hopelessly except the evil we love, and desire to continue in, and make no effort to escape from. 
— George Eliot, Daniel Deronda
Some loves have to be given up, others have to be forgotten. Strange as it may sound, if you think of me as a monster, but I can love most passionately. I do not think of myself as evil.
— Christopher Pike, The Last Vampire
That’s the problem with you nearly immortal types,” I said. “You couldn’t spot a pop culture reference if it skittered up and implanted an embryo down your esophagus.
— Jim Butcher, Small Favor
My hate is general, I detest all men;Some because they are wicked and do evil,Others because they tolerate the wicked,Refusing them the active vigorous scornWhich vice should stimulate in virtuous minds.
— Molière, The Misanthrope
And of the Witch? In the life of a Witch, there is no "after", in the "ever after" of a Witch there is no "happily"; in the story of a Witch, there is no afterword. Of that part that is beyond the life story, beyond the story of the life, there is-alas, or perhaps thank mercy-no telling. She was dead, dead, and gone, and all that was left of her was the carapace of her reputation for malice.
— Gregory Maguire, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
Love binds, and it binds forever. Good binds while evil unravels. Separation is another word for evil; it is also another word for deceit.
— Michel Houellebecq, The Elementary Particles
The healthy man does not torture others - generally it is the tortured who turn into torturers.Carl JungSwiss psychologist (1875 - 1961)
— C.G. Jung
Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years.
— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956
When you start with a necessary evil, and then over time the necessity passes away, what's left?
— Matthew Scully, Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy
The world we suggest is a new wild west. A sensuous evil world. Strange and haunting, the path of the sun…
— Jim Morrison
True and baseless evil is as rare as the purest good--and we all know how rare that is...
— Jasper Fforde, The Eyre Affair
My question is, do you believe in an evil possessed of its own purity? or does every act intend some good?...
— Brent Weeks, Shadow's Edge
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 con
— C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil. 
— Ayn Rand
All evil is good become cancerous.
— Isaac Asimov
The wacky thing about those bad guys is that you can't count on them to be obvious. They forget to wax their mustaches and goatees, leave their horns at home, send their black hats to the dry cleaner's. They're funny like that.
— Jim Butcher, White Night
Why are we talking about this good and evil? They're just names for sides. We know that.
— Neil Gaiman, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch
Bring it, Darth Bathrobe!
— Jim Butcher, White Night
None of us can avoid being contaminated by the world's evils
—  it's all a matter of what attitude you take towards them.
Ms. Sophia was evil bananas.
— Lauren Kate, Torment
You’re playing the creepy vibe a little hard,” I said. “Might as well go for broke, put on a black top hat and pipe in some organ music.
— Jim Butcher, Small Favor
Unless a man becomes the enemy of an evil, he will not even become its slave but rather its champion.
— G.K. Chesterton
I started after him...and the clown looked back. I saw Its eyes, and all at once I understood who It was.""Who was it, Don?" Harold Gardner asked softly."It was Derry," Don Hagarty said. "It was this town.
— Stephen King, It
He didn't have a single clue what was going on with these two strangers, but every instinct told him Master George equaled good, Mistress Jane equaled bald- he blinked-uh, bad. 
— James Dashner, The Journal of Curious Letters
The daggers of silence last longer than anything ever spoken.
— Shannon L. Alder
Years later, I learned an English word for the creature that Assef was, a word for which a good Farsi equivalent does not exist: sociopath.
— Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner
If you say there is no such thing as morality in absolute terms, then child abuse is not evil, it just may not happen to be your thing.
— Rebecca Manley Pippert
The proper function of a government is to make it easy for the people to do good, and difficult for them to do evil.	
— Daniel Webster, The Writings and Speeches of Daniel Webster: Diplomatic Papers and Miscellaneous Letters
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.
— Haruki Murakami, South of the Border, West of the Sun
Most people are good and occasionally do something they know is bad. Some people are bad and struggle every day to keep it under control. Others are corrupt to the core and don’t give a damn, as long as they don’t get caught. But evil is a completely different creature, Mac. Evil is bad that believes it’s good.
— Karen Marie Moning, Shadowfever
Evil doesn't die. It never dies. It just takes on a new face, a new name. Just because we've been touched by it once, it doesn't mean we're immune to ever being hurt again. Lightning can strike twice.
— Tess Gerritsen, The Surgeon
The real thing about evil," said the Witch at the doorway, "isn't any of what you said. You figure out one side of it - the human side, say - and the eternal side goes into shadow. Or vice versa. It's like the old saw: What does a dragon in its shell look like? Well no one can ever tell, for as soon as you break the shell to see, the dragon is no longer in its shell. The real disaster of this inquiry is that it is the nature of evil to be secret.
— Gregory Maguire, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
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.
— Alan Moore, Watchmen
Governments will rise, and governments will fall, and man will do evil to man, and all we can do is turn our hearts to good.
— Margaret Peterson Haddix, Among the Enemy
When I say that evil has to do with killing, I do not mean to restrict myself to corporeal murder. Evil is that which kills spirit. There are various essential attributes of life -- particularly human life -- such as sentience, mobility, awareness, growth, autonomy, will. It is possible to kill or attempt to kill one of these attributes without actually destroying the body. Thus we may "break" a horse or even a child without harming a hair on its head. Erich Fromm was acutely sensitive to this fact when he broadened the definition of necrophilia to include the desire of certain people to control others-to make them controllable, to foster their dependency, to discourage their capacity to think for themselves, to diminish their unpredectibility and originalty, to keep them in line. Distinguishing it from a "biophilic" person, one who appreciates and fosters the variety of life forms and the uniqueness of the individual, he demonstrated a "necrophilic character type," whose aim it is to avoid the inconvenience of life by transforming others into obedient automatons, robbing them of their humanity.Evil then, for the moment, is the force, residing either inside or outside of human beings, that seeks to kill life or liveliness. And goodness is its opposite. Goodness is that which promotes life and liveliness.
— M. Scott Peck, People of the Lie: The Hope for Healing Human Evil
His voice was low, and I think he would've been hot if he weren't radiating that air of "I Am Super Evil--No, Really--And Not In The Sexy Way.
— Rachel Hawkins, Spell Bound
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.
— Gregory Maguire, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
A perfectly evil Devil makes even less sense than a perfect God.
— Anne Rice
Evil was predictable, always painfully expected.
— Ted Dekker, BoneMan's Daughters
Hate is the father of all evil.
— David Gemmell, Fall of Kings
I see you brought along your violent little girlfriend. What a nice surprise!" - Saint Dane (The Reality Bug)
— D.J. MacHale
Justice, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. Some see an innocent victim. Others will see evil incarnate getting exactly what's deserved.
— Emily Thorne
No matter how hard Evil tries, it can never quite match up to the power of Good, because Evil is ultimately self-destructive. Evil may set out to corrupt others, but in the process corrupts itself.
— John Connolly, The Infernals
Evil must always be fought.
— Patricia Briggs, Raven's Shadow
I find it most remarkable that we who are so intimately involved in the battle between good and evil are even more involved with the shades of gray in between them.
— Christopher Golden, Sons of Entropy
There are sacraments of evil as well as of good about us, and we live and move to my belief in an unknown world, a place where there are caves and shadows and dwellers in twilight. It is possible that man may sometimes return on the track of evolution, and it is my belief that an awful lore is not yet dead.
— Arthur Machen
Is there worse evil than that which goes in the mask of good?
— Lloyd Alexander, The High King
The dark is generous, and it is patient, and it always wins. It always wins because it is everywhere. It is in the wood that burns in your hearth, and in the kettle on the fire; it is under your chair and under your table and under the sheets on your bed. Walk in the midday sun, and the dark is with you, attached to the soles of your feet. The brightest light casts the darkest shadow.
— Matthew Woodring Stover
I blinked at her, suddenly loathing her to the depths of my soul. Not only was she probably rather evil, and definitely thoroughly unpleasant, but she also didn't read.
— Nicole Peeler
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)
— Anonymous, Holy Bible: New International Version
Evil can't be scientifically defined: it's an illusory moral concept that doesn't exist in nature. Its origins and connotations have been inextricably been linked to religion and mythology.
— Spencer Reid
no one wanted to look at the common evils of society. Very few were willing to put aside their own pursuit of happiness long enough to consider the effects of greed and jealousy around them. From what she'd seen, humans were essentially troubled. For every one behind bars, another ten deserved to be behind bars, but that would put one in ten Americans behind bars.
— Ted Dekker, BoneMan's Daughters
Evil always wins through the strength of its splendid dupes
—  and there has in all ages been a disastrous alliance between abnormal innocence and abnormal sin.
Looks like it's time to liven up this dead little town!" - Saint Dane (The Reality Bug)
— D.J. MacHale, The Reality Bug
My old man's a white old manAnd my old mother's black.If ever I cursed my white old manI take my curses back.If ever I cursed my black old motherAnd wished she were in hell,I'm sorry for that evil wishAnd now i wish her wellMy old man died in a fine big houseMy Ma died in a shack.I wonder were i'm going to die,Being neither white nor black?
— Langston Hughes
If there was such evil in the world, was it possible that there was good, too?
— Patricia Briggs, Raven's Strike
But see you, we should travel by night. Dark times for dark business, as they says. No sun to bother Valeriana or you, Kaylana's surely no' disadvantaged, and I know I work better in darkness. Anybody looking for us will have a harder time of it. Besides, marching in daylight is for the heroes. If we're going to do this, we may as well go all out.
— Eve Forward, Villains by Necessity
Failure to recognize one's own absolute significance is equivalent to a denial of human worth; this is a basic error and the origin of all unbelief. If one is so faint-hearted that he is powerless even to believe in himself, how can he believe in anything else? The basic falsehood and evil of egoism lie not in this absolute self-consciousness and self-evaluation of the subject, but in the fact that, ascribing to himself in all justice an absolute significance, he unjustly refuses to others this same significance. Recognizing himself as a centre of life (which as a matter of fact he is), he relegates others to the circumference of his own being and leaves them only an external and relative value.
— Vladimir Sergeyevich Solovyov, The Meaning of Love
So... Boris. Are you evil?' [said the Doctor].'Not at all, my dear sir,' chuckled Boris.'You just chuckled,' groaned the Doctor. 'Chuckling's a dead givaway in my books. Along with putting your hands on your hips and snogging another man's wife.
— James Goss, Doctor Who: Dead of Winter
Evil in the Third Reich had lost the quality by which most people recognize it—the quality of temptation.
— Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil
Ever since I realized there waz someone callt/ a colored girl an evil woman a bitch or a nag/ i been tryin not to be that & leave bitterness/ in somebody else's cup...
— Ntozake Shange, for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf
The voice is deep and soft, not a sound so much as a feeling. It is storm and wind and leaves twisting in the night. It is roots sucking deep at the earth, and the pale, sightless creatures that live below the ground. But there’s something wrong with this voice, something diseased at its core.
— Sabaa Tahir, An Ember in the Ashes
I have a deep-down belief that there are folks in the world who are good through and through, and others who came in mean and will go out mean. It's like coffee. Once it's roasted, it all looks brown. Until you pour hot water on it and see what comes out. Folks get into hot water, you see what comes out.
— Nancy E. Turner, Sarah's Quilt
Evil people rely on the acquiescence of naive good people to allow them to continue with their evil.
— Stuart Aken
Evil forges a tornado.But goodness battles in a straight line.
— Caris Roane
Why is there evil in the world? Because sometimes you just wanna fuckin have it, and you don’t care who gets hurt.
— Joe Hill
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.
— Chuck Palahniuk, Damned
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.
— Anonymous, The Dhammapada
If evil had a laugh, she thought it would sound like his.
— Nenia Campbell, Black Beast
Negro Slavery is an evil of Colossal magnitude and I am utterly averse to the admission of Slavery into the Missouri Territories.
— John  Adams, Familiar Letters Of John Adams And His Wife Abigail Adams During The Revolution: With A Memoir Of Mrs. Adams
He who searches for evil, must first look at his own reflection.
— Confucius
I have done so many things in my life," she said to the mirror. "Evil things, perhaps. But never unattentively, never wastefully...was I wrong?
— Lawrence Durrell, Justine
It's wrong to anticipate evil.
— Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights
Evil is relative…You can’t hang a sign on it. You can’t touch it or taste it or cut it with a sword. Evil depends on where you are standing, pointing your indicting finger.
— Glen Cook, The Black Company
Often, the greater our ignorance about something, the greater our resistance to change.
— Marc Bekoff, Animals Matter: A Biologist Explains Why We Should Treat Animals with Compassion and Respect
I am the spirit that negates.And rightly so, for all that comes to beDeserves to perish wretchedly;'Twere better nothing would begin.Thus everything that that your terms, sin,Destruction, evil represent—That is my proper element.
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust - Part One
The most racking pangs succeeded: a grinding in the bones, deadly nausea, and a horror of the spirit that cannot be exceeded at the hour of birth or death. Then these agonies began swiftly to subside, and I came to myself as if out of a great sickness. There was something strange in my sensations, something indescribably sweet. I felt younger, lighter, happier in body; within I was conscious of a heady recklessness, a current of disordered sensual images running like a millrace in my fancy, a solution of the bonds of obligation, an unknown but innocent freedom of the soul. I knew myself, at the first breath of this new life, to be more wicked, tenfold more wicked, sold a slave to my original evil and the thought, in that moment, braced and delighted me like wine.
— Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
There's a Good Book about goodness and how to be good and so forth, but there's no Evil Book about how to be evil and how to be bad. The Devil had no prophets to write his Ten Commandments, and no team of authors to write his biography. His case has gone completely by default. We know nothing about him but a lot of fairy stories from our parents and schoolmasters. He has no book from which we can learn the nature of evil in all its forms, with parables about evil people, proverbs about evil people, folklore about evil people. All we have is the living example of people who are least good, or our own intuition.
— Ian Fleming, Casino Royale
Ultimately evil is done not so much by evil people, but by good people who do not know themselves and who do not probe deeply.
— Reinhold Niebuhr
There are no self-proclaimed villains, only regiments of self-proclaimed saints. Victorious historians rule where good or evil lies.
— Glen Cook, Chronicles of the Black Company
Never concede to evil…. When we concede to evil, even in a small way, we feed it, and it grows stronger.
— Dave Wolverton, The Courtship of Princess Leia
At that moment I remembered something Cal had told me: that there is beauty in darkness in everything. Sorrow in joy, life and death, thorns on the rose. I knew then that I could not escape pain and torment any more than I could give up joy and beauty
— Cate Tiernan, Awakening
Was aus Liebe getan wird, geschieht immer jenseits von Gut und Böse. (What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil.)
— Friedrich Nietzsche
The monstrous act by definition demands a monster.
— Rick Yancey
It's the fools that make all the trouble in the world, not the wicked.
— L.M. Montgomery, Jane of Lantern Hill