c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
For she had discovered that as well as the evil web there was another. This too bound spirits together, but not in a tangle, it was a patterned web and one could see the silver pattern when the sun shone upon it. It seemed much frailer than the dark tangle, that had a hideous strength, but it might not be so always, not in the final reckoning.
— Elizabeth Goudge, The Child from the Sea
Mine would be, "We will stand together, he and I. One in victory, one in shame. Only then can I truly own the power of Halla. How sweet the moment of revelation will be, when he learns that he handed it to me." -SD the Pilgrims of Rayne
— D.J. MacHale
There is a difference between what is wrong and what is evil. Evil is committed when clarity is taken away from what is clearly wrong, allowing wrong to be seen as less wrong, excusable, right, or an obligatory commandment of the Lord God Almighty.Evil is bad sold as good, wrong sold as right, injustice sold as justice. Like the coat of a virus, a thin veil of right can disguise enormous wrong and confer an ability to infect others.
— John Hartung
Triviality is evil - triviality, that is, in the form of consciousness and mind that adapts itself to the world as it is, that obeys the principle of inertia. And this principle of inertia truly is what is radically evil.
— Theodor W. Adorno, Metaphysics: Concept and Problems
Yet I think the demon's target is not the possessed; it is us . . . the observers . . . every person in this house. And I think---I think the point is to make us despair; to reject our own humanity, Damien: to see ourselves as ultimately bestial; as ultimately vile and putrescent; without dignity; ugly; unworthy.
— William Peter Blatty, The Exorcist
A rock is harder than a feather, you can talk and jabber and make exceptions, but in the end, if you have to choose which one is gonna hit you on the head, you'll choose the feather every single time.
— Andrew Klavan, The Truth of the Matter
It seems to me it's always the evil we refuse to see that does us the greatest harm.
— Robert B. Baer, See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism
All evil begins with this belief: that another’s existence is less precious than mine.
— Tony Hendra, The Messiah of Morris Avenue
Justice is always naive and self-confident; believing that it will immediately win once recognized. That is the reason why the forces of Justice are so poorly organized. On the other hand, the Evil is cynic, sly and fantastically organized. It never ever has the illusion of the ability to stand on its own feet and to win in a fair competition. That is why it is ready to use any kind of means without hesitation. And of course it does - under the banners of the most noble ideas.
— Vladimir Bukovsky
The roots of any evil deed can be traced to the perpetrator's refusal to experience pain.
— Keith Ablow, Denial
Goodness was not a trait you acquired
—  it was a value you practiced when you were on the verge of doing evil.
If someone slaps you on one cheek, offer the other cheek also...but of course if you were able to stand soberly after the first slap.
— Toba Beta, Betelgeuse Incident: Insiden Bait Al-Jauza
Well, evil to some is always good to others.
— Jane Austen, Emma
The bad things don't seem to happen to bad people.'That's because they already did. There's no original evil left in the world.
— Keith Ablow, Denial
True evil is always petty and often incompetent.
— Claire Chilton
Jesus Christ.” The fury on Nick’s face was enough to send me reeling and he hit the table hard enough with his hand that it made the plates and the silverware on the table bounce and clatter. “You give me the names and approximate location of those men who gave you that ultimatum and I’ll kill every goddamned one of them.”I sighed before I said quietly. “I already did.
— Cheyenne McCray, The First Sin
It isn't hard to find evil in this world. Evil is always more easily imagined than good, somehow.
— Gregory Maguire, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
The tyrant is a child of PrideWho drinks from his sickening cup Recklessness and vanity,Until from his high crest headlongHe plummets to the dust of hope.
— Sophocles, Oedipus Rex
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?
— John Steinbeck, East of Eden
In thy foul throat thou liest.
— William Shakespeare, Richard III
Many people believe that evil is the presence of something. I think it's the absence of something.
— Lisa Unger, Sliver of Truth
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.
— Saul Bellow, Henderson the Rain King
Evil doesn't always have one face, Ethan.
— Kami Garcia
He always smiles, even when contemplating nothing good.
— Henryk Sienkiewicz, In Desert and Wilderness
The evil done by men of goodwill is the worst of all ... We have done terrible things, for the best of reasons, and that makes it worse.
— Iain Pears, The Dream of Scipio
It's now what enters men's mouths that's evil. It's what comes out of their mouths that is.
— Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
The canter is a cure for every evil.
— Benjamin Disraeli
A good end cannot sanctify evil means
—  nor must we ever do evil that good may come of it.
If she knew me as I really am she would despise me, and certainly not aid or abet my evil designs. To veil their vices from the sight of the good is the only resource of those who are not blind and know themselves to be vicious.' Thus was I confirmed in habits of hypocrisy; and these, for a time, worked only too effectually to my advantage.
— William Beckford, The Episodes of Vathek
Poor Hayduke: won all his arguments but lost his immortal soul.
— Edward Abbey, The Monkey Wrench Gang
What is evil?' you ask. To which I reply, 'Who are you, Friedrich Nietzsche?' To which you respond, 'Duh, wha? Me no understand.'Then I put you back in your cage.
— Josh Lieb, I am a Genius of Unspeakable Evil and I Want to Be Your Class President
All that evil requires is an absence of virtue, where somebody didn't make a stand.
— Terry Darlington
The greater evil who is in-When both in wayward paths are straying? The poor sinner for the painOr he who pays for the sin?
— Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz
What is evil?" asked the younger man. The round web, with its black center, seemed to watch them both. "A web we men weave." Ged answered.
— Ursula K. Le Guin, The Farthest Shore
But if you caught my informant,' said Achilles, 'why in the world would Chamrajnagar—or Graff, if it was him—launch the shuttle anyway? Was catching me doing something naughty so important they’d risk a shuttle and it’s crew just to catch me? I find that quite… flattering. Sort of like winning the Nobel Prize for scariest villain.
— Orson Scott Card, Shadow Puppets
O, lack and doubt and fear can only comeBecause of plenty, confidence, and love!They are the shadow-forms about their feet,Because they are not perfect crystal-clearTo the all-searching sun in which they live.Dread of its loss is Beauty’s certain seal!
— George MacDonald, A Hidden Life and Other Poems
The deceitfulness of the heart of man appears in no one thing so much as this of spiritual pride and self-righteousness. The subtlety of Satan appears in its height, in his managing persons with respect to this sin. And perhaps one reason may be that here he has most experience; he knows the way of its coming in; he is acquainted with the secret springs of it: it was his own sin. Experience gives vast advantage in leading souls, either in good or evil.
— Jonathan Edwards, The Religious Affections
Do not imagine that the good you intend will balance the evil you perform
— Norman Mac Donald
How shall a man judge what to do in such times?''As he ever has judged,' said Aragorn. 'Good and ill have not changed since yesteryear...It is a man's part to discern them, as much in th Golden Wood as in his own house.
— J.R.R. Tolkien
Evil is relatively rare
—  ignorance is epidemic.
Why is it that any time we speak of temptation we always speak of temptation as something that inclines us to wrong. We have more temptations to become good than we do to become bad.
— Fulton J. Sheen
You cannot stare evil in the face; it has no face. It has no body, no bones, no blood. Any attempt to describe it ends in glibness and self-delusion.
— Douglas Preston, The Monster of Florence
Don't let me get into your head. I will twist it and alter it until even you won't recognize yourself. You cannot begin to comprehend the power I possess. I can harm you in any way impossible.
— Troy Bisson
He who profits by villainy, has perpetrated it.
— Iain Pears, An Instance of the Fingerpost
The seeds of salvation are buried in every act of evil.
— Shūsaku Endō, Deep River
It is very seldom that one encounters what would appear to be sheer unadulterated evil in a human face; an evil, I mean, active, deliberate, deadly, dangerous. Folly, heedlessness, vanity, pride, craft, meanness, stupidity - yes. But even Iagos in this world are few, and devilry is as rare as witchcraft. ("Bad Company")
— Walter de la Mare, Ghost Stories
I believe in the devil, in the Powers of Darkness, Lawford, as firmly as I believe he and they are powerless – in the long run. They – what shall we say? - have surrendered their intrinsicality. You can just go through evil, as you can go through a sewer, and come out on the other side. A loathsome process too.
— Walter de la Mare, The Return
Without knowing it, Javert in his awful happiness was deserving of pity, like every ignorant man who triumphs. Nothing could have been more poignant or more heartrending than that countenance on which was inscribed all the evil in what is good.
— Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
Is evil something you are? Or is it something you do?
— Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho
Evil draws its power from indecision and concern for what other people think.
— Pope Benedict XVI
There is evil! It's actual, like cement.I can't believe it. I can't stand it.Evil is not a view ... it's an ingredient in us. In the world. Poured over us, filtering into our bodies, minds, hearts, into the pavement itself.
— Philip K. Dick, The Man in the High Castle
You are not evil, Fell. You have just been robbed of love. Of light.
— David Clement-Davies, The Sight
Jez had gone from an evil twin to a sweet, even angelic, girl, all in less than a minute.
— Ridley Pearson, Disney at Dawn
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.
— Antonio Negri, Impero
Ay, that I had not done a thousand more.Even now I curse the day—and yet, I think,Few come within the compass of my curse,—Wherein I did not some notorious ill,As kill a man, or else devise his death,Ravish a maid, or plot the way to do it,Accuse some innocent and forswear myself,Set deadly enmity between two friends,Make poor men's cattle break their necks;Set fire on barns and hay-stacks in the night,And bid the owners quench them with their tears.Oft have I digg'd up dead men from their graves,And set them upright at their dear friends' doors,Even when their sorrows almost were forgot;And on their skins, as on the bark of trees,Have with my knife carved in Roman letters,'Let not your sorrow die, though I am dead.'Tut, I have done a thousand dreadful thingsAs willingly as one would kill a fly,And nothing grieves me heartily indeedBut that I cannot do ten thousand more.
— William Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus
when traumatic events are of human design, those who bear witness are caught in the conflict between victim and perpetrator. All the perpetrator asks is that the bystander do nothing. He appeals to the universal desire to see, hear, and speak no evil. The victim, on the contrary, asks the bystander to share the burden of pain. The victim demands action, engagement and remembering.
— Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror
Therefore, it is we who are responsible for much of the evil in the world; and we are each morally required to accept rather than project that ponderous responsibility-lest we prefer instead to wallow in a perennial state of powerless, frustrated, furious, victimhood. For what one possesses the power to bring about, one has also the power to limit, mitigate, counteract, or transmute.
— Stephen A. Diamond, Anger, Madness, and the Daimonic
There's never been an act done since the beginning, from a kid stealing candy to a dictator committing genocide, that the person doing it didn't think he was fully justified. That's a mental trick called rationalizing, and it's done the human race more harm than anything else you can name.
— Leigh Brackett, The Long Tomorrow
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.
— Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
I cannot think why we should be astonished at all the evils which exist in the Church, when those who ought to be models on which all may pattern their virtues are annulling the work wrought in the religious Orders by the spirit of the saints of old.
— Teresa of Ávila, The Life of Saint Teresa of Ávila by Herself
So revenge is obviously a deeply messed-up expression of vindictiveness. It is hard to even call it "evil." It is just plain insanity. A result of deeply messed-up thinking.
— Venkatesh G. Rao, Be Slightly Evil: A Playbook for Sociopaths
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.
— Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad
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.
— Nora Roberts, Heaven and Earth
Evil was coming. I wondered whose face it would be wearing.
— Dean Koontz, Odd Thomas
They were handsome, proper and normal family fathers who built the concentration camps and whipped the prisoners to death. And who was Nietzsche? A narcotized syphilitic.
— Jens Bjørneboe
Hell is the impossibility of reason.
— Oliver Stone
Good and Evil are very hard to explain or understand. I'm sure that evil exists, but it is hard to isolate. Good and evil are intertwined and impossible to separate. They are not completely opposites and in fact are often one and the same.
— Keith Haring, Keith Haring Journals
Evil is a point of view ... God kills, and so shall we; indiscriminately ... for no creatures under God are as we are, none so like Him as ourselves.God kills indiscriminately and so shall we. For no creatures under God are as we are none so like him as ourselves.
— Anne Rice, Interview with the Vampire
The symbol of a drama, a symphony, or a dance is useful to correct a certain absurdity which may arise if we talk too much of God planning and creating the world for good and then being frustrated by the free will of the creatures. This may raise the ridiculous idea that the Fall to God by surprise and upset His plan, or else – more ridiculous still – that God planned the whole thing for conditions which, He well knew, were never going to be realized. In fact, of course, God saw the crucifixion in the act of creating the first nebulae. The world is a dance in which good, descending from God, is disturbed by evil arising from the creatures, and the resulting conflict is resolved by God's own assumption of the suffering nature which evil produces.
— C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain
The problem with evil people is that they can see only evil in others. It is one of the worst curses of being evil, that you can no longer experience good. 
— Michael Gruber, The Book of Air and Shadows
Like sin itself, Satan appeals to the senses. He originated and perfected the art of disguising evil as good.
— Charles R. Swindoll
Ignorance is an evil weed, which dictators may cultivate among their dupes, but which no democracy can afford among its citizens.
— William Beveridge
The people come from everywhere, from five hundred miles, to find their fortunes. By fortune is an ugly, two-faced goddess. When you have lived with her handiwork for half a generation, you hardly notice anymore. You forget that this is not the way life has to be. You cease to marvel at just how much evil man con conjure by existing.
— Glen Cook, Water Sleeps
What is discovered may be abused, but that does not mean the discovery was evil.
— Fulton J. Sheen, Life Is Worth Living
Love permeates all and energizes life.Even evil has love. If not, she is dead.
— Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut
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...
— Philip Pullman, The Golden Compass
you are good when you strive to give of yourself.
— Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
If you know the North, you know where the South is; if you know the darkness, you know where the light is! Evil is an excellent compass to find the good!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
It is mercy, not justice or courage or even heroism, that alone can defeat evil.
— Peter Kreeft, The Philosophy of Tolkien: The Worldview Behind the Lord of the Rings
Very evil people cannot really be imagined dying.
— Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from a Damaged Life
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.
— Richard Adams, Watership Down
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.
— Christopher Hitchens, Christopher Hitchens and His Critics: Terror, Iraq, and the Left
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.
— Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume
Evil that arises out of ordinary thinking and is committed by ordinary people is the norm, not the exception.
— Ervin Staub, The Roots of Evil
It isn’t hard to find evil in this world. Evil is always more easily imagined than good, somehow.
— Gregory Maguire, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
...it is in the very fundamentals of evil that one always condemns it when they see it but rationalizes it when they do it.
— Jack L. Chalker, The Ninety Trillion Fausts
The sole social evil is darkness; humanity is identity, for all men are made of the same clay.
— Victor Hugo
In account after account of exorcisms the demonic voices will propound nihilism of one variety or another.
— J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
The nose can’t help catchin’ what the ears get sick with. Yessir, rock bands just sweat evil. Evil’s been around for a long time, ever since rocks started getting real hot and making a lot of noise as they exploded out o’ the ground and evil spirits wisped out of hell. If a band ever uses a fog machine, hold your breath so you don’t become possessed by one.
— M.C. Humphreys
Evil and I are old adversaries. When we compete I hate to lose," Manny Bettencourt from Murder in the Pinelands
— Larry Moniz
Her name was Mora ... and she was waiting.
— M.L. LeGette, The Unicorn Girl
Evil is also not anything small or close to home, and not the worst; otherwise one could grow accustomed to it.
— Jacob Grimm, The Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm - Illustrated by Arthur Rackham
[T]he scale of a man's evil is not entirely to be measured by its practical consequences. Men commit evil within the scope available to them.
— Theodore Dalrymple, Our Culture, What's Left of It: The Mandarins and the Masses
Hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil but then also do no evil.
— Amit Abraham
Active evil is better than passive good
— William Blake
...That insurgent horror was knit to him closer than a wife, closer than an eye lay caged in his flesh, where he heard it mutter and felt it struggle to be born; and at every hour of weakness, and in the confidence of slumber, prevailed against him, and deposed him out of life.
— Robert Louis Stevenson, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
There is no absolute hate or evil. On the contrary hate or evil are always intimately blended with love and goodness. What causes more hate and evil is paradoxically what tends to be done in the name of love and goodness. Hence, in order to reduce hate and evil we need to be aware of love and goodness, rather than hate and evil.
— Franco Santoro
Heroic ambition seemed to have been the cause of much of the world's pain then - quite like it is now. No villain ever saw himself a villain: he only saw himself a hero
—  and this goes just as no hero ever saw himself a hero: he simply did what he had to do. No true hero initially sets out with intentions of being deemed a hero.
In the use of force, one simplifies the situation by assuming that the evil to be overcome is clear-cut, definite, and irreversible. Hence there remains but one thing: to eliminate it. Any dialogue with the sinner, any question of the irreversibility of his act, only means faltering and failure. Failure to eliminate evil is itself a defeat. Anything that even remotely risks such defeat is in itself capitulation to evil. The irreversibility of evil then reaches out to contaminate even the tolerant thought of the hesitant crusader who, momentarily, doubts the total evil of the enemy he is about to eliminate. p. 21
— Thomas Merton, Gandhi On Non-Violence
Both [Satan and Melkor/Morgoth] are loud in their defiance, claiming that they would "rather rule in hell than serve in heaven". One might have admired these rebel angels if one believed their defiance was in the name of liberty- however, both lied. Their rebellions were only provoked by envy and the usurpers' wishes to take the perceived tyrants' place. Never were two more natural tyrants than Morgoth and Satan.
— David Day
Plunder, ravage and kill; the secret works of the repugnant. Since the fall of man and brother killing brother, evil has owned the night.
— Dennis F. Larsen, The Living Hunger
Which comes first: Good or Evil? Usually evil. Good counters.
— Steve Chapman
Evil itself is a dictator, whether it’s dressed up like a pompous little man with a moustache, or a bunch of faceless terrorists, or a fundamentalist state. That’s what the devil is, you know. And it’s precious difficult to combat. Or rather, it’s not so much difficult, as demanding of great courage. Will, and wit.
— Chico Kidd, The Printer's Devil
You've been marked and labeled in the spiritual world just by virtue of your birth. If you claim the family name of Christian, you are being hunted to be destroyed.
— Kenny Luck, Fight: Are You Willing to Pick a Fight with Evil?
...some men aren't looking for anything logical, like money. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.
— Michael Caine
The whole thing becomes like this evil enchantment from a fairy tale, but you're made to believe the spell can never be broken.
— Jess C. Scott, Heart's Blood
As you know, human history is full of evil deeds, and maybe we ought to think of them with tears, not fascination.
— Elizabeth Kostova, The Historian
No doubt your sword is indeed a beautiful thing. It is a tribute to whoever forged it in bygone ages. There are very few such swords as this one left in the world, but remember, it is only a sword, Matthias! It contains no secret spell, nor holds within its blade any magical power. This sword is made for only one purpose, to kill. It will only be as good or evil as the one who wields it. I know that you intend to use it only for the good of your Abbey, Matthias; do so, but never allow yourself to be tempted into using it in a careless or idle way. It would inevitably cost you your life, or that of your dear ones. Martin the Warrior used the sword only for right and good. This is why it has become a symbol of power to Redwall. Knowledge is gained through wisdom, my friend. Use the sword wisely.
— Brian Jacques, Redwall
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.
— Honoré de Balzac, Père Goriot
The fact that you are possessed by a demon does not mean you must become evil. Being evil is a choice, just as being good is a choice. If you let the demon take over, it's because you choose to.
— James Swain, Dark Magic
There is no abstract Evil; you have to understand that! Its roots are here, all around us, in this herd that goes on chewing and having a good time only an hour after a murder! That's what you have to fight for. For people. Evil is a hydra with many heads, and the more of them you cut off, the more it grows! Hydras have to be starved to death, do you understand that? Kill a hundred Dark Ones, and a thousand more will take their place.
— Sergei Lukyanenko, Night Watch
Good and evil keep happening in this world. It just takes a little longer for us to take the bad in our stride. And just when we think we've come to terms with bad, we're shocked to be haunted by that one query whose answer is ever as elusive - why on earth did it have to happen to me ?
— Tuhin A. Sinha, The Edge of Desire
If you throw stones on my way to stumble and I fall, you try to put extra care when passing my way, lest you stumble and fall.
— Válgame, Zori 2ª Parte
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.
— William Styron, Sophie's Choice
O [Roman] people be ashamed; be ashamed of your lives. Almost no cities are free of evil dens, are altogether free of impurities, except the cities in which the barbarians have begun to live...Let nobody think otherwise, the vices of our bad lives have alone conquered us...The Goths lie, but are chaste, the Franks lie, but are but are generous, the Saxons are savage in cruelty...but are admirable in chastity...what hope can there be [for the Romans] when the barbarians are more pure [than they]?"-Salvian
— William J. Federer, Change to Chains-The 6,000 Year Quest for Control -Volume I-Rise of the Republic
... Faustus ... dared to confirm he had advanced beyond the level of a scarlet sinner — he was a conscious follower of the Prince of Darkness. The fact he could publicly project an Antichrist image with pride, having no fear of reprisal, and his seeming diabolical art of escaping all punishment when others who were considered heretics had burned at the stake for less, would certainly signal that an unnatural individual walked in their midst. It is true in many respects he assumed the role of the charlatan, yet how apropos, considering his willingness to follow his ‘brother-in-law’ known as the Father of Lies and deception.
— E.A. Bucchianeri, Faust: My Soul Be Damned for the World: Volume I
Kent steepled his fingers in consideration. Blood-red rubies flashed in the sunlight, like the eyes of a demon clutched in his hands.
— V.S. Carnes
You might not believe in the devil, but do you believe evil lurks in this world?
— Nicki Elson, Divine Temptation
There were fourteen steps exactly fourteen. But the top one was smaller, out of proportion, as if it had been added to avoid the evil number.
— Stephen King, 'Salem's Lot
The flip side of the coin of which Good and Evil are but one side.
— Terry Pratchett, The Color of Magic
Well, as Hannah Arendt famously said, there can be a banal aspect to evil. In other words, it doesn't present always. I mean, often what you're meeting is a very mediocre person. But nonetheless, you can get a sort of frisson of wickedness from them. And the best combination of those, I think, I describe him in the book, is/was General Jorge Rafael Videla of Argentina, who I met in the late 1970s when the death squad war was at its height, and his fellow citizens were disappearing off the street all the time. And he was, in some ways, extremely banal. I describe him as looking like a human toothbrush. He was a sort of starch, lean officer with a silly mustache, and a very stupid look to him, but a very fanatical glint as well. And, if I'd tell you why he's now under house arrest in Argentina, you might get a sense of the horror I felt as I was asking him questions about all this. He's in prison in Argentina for selling the children of the rape victims among the private prisoners, who he kept in a personal jail. And I don't know if I've ever met anyone who's done anything as sort of condensedly horrible as that.
— Christopher Hitchens
Never underestimate the power of good but never ignore evil lurking in the hearts of men.Rose of Life
— Sonia Rumzi
I thought, gazing at the beauty of the landscape again, it is as though the fiend has prevailed against the angels, and fixed his throne in a heaven, to rule it as though it were Hell.
— Tom Holland, Lord Of The Dead
Though they may not always be handsome men doomed to evil posses the manly virtues.
— Jean Genet, The Thief's Journal
The intellectual climate of the 1970s, for which the 1950s had already paved the way, contributed to this. A theory was even finally developed at that time that pedophilia should be viewed as something positive. Above all, however, the thesis was advocated-and this even infiltrated Catholic moral theology-that there was no such thing as something that is bad in itself. There were only things that were "relatively" bad. What was good or bad depended on the consequences. In such a context, where everything is relative and nothing intrinsically evil exists, but only relative good and relative evil, people who have an inclination to such behavior are left without no solid footing. Of course pedophilia is first rather a sickness of individuals, but the fact that it could become so active and so widespread was linked also to an intellectual climate through which the foundations of moral theology, good and evil, became open to question in the Church. Good and evil became interchangeable; they were no longer absolutely clear opposites.
— Pope Benedict XVI, Light of the World: The Pope, the Church, and the Signs of the Times - A Conversation with Peter Seewald
All that is necessary for evil to prevail is for good people to do nothing.
— Carlton Smith, Hunting Evil
Shortly after we were in bed I began my story, but made it so absurd, so long, and so tiresome, that, as my intention was, I sent her to sleep, and should have gone to sleep myself - but dark plots are ever wakeful. (“The Story of Prince Barkiarokh”)
— William Beckford, The Episodes of Vathek
The crookedness of the serpent is still straight enough to slide through the snake hole.
— Abraham Verghese, Cutting for Stone
Jan could not recall ever seeing a creature more beautiful, though there nagged somewhere at the back of his mind the notion that she ought to have seemed hideous. Why? For she was pure, admirably pure, without a twinge of conscience or shame.
— Meredith Ann Pierce, Birth of the Firebringer
A son for a son, heh. But that's a grandson...and he never was much use." --Walder Frey
— George R.R. Martin, A Storm of Swords
what? shall we receive good at the hand of God and shall we not receive evil?
— Job 2:10
A hanging, though, was something different. I got to thinking. We hadn’t never been to nothing just to have a good time. A hanging was special and we was all getting to go.
— Eddie Whitlock, Evil Is Always Human
We learn that there are in creation, Beings - perhaps very numerous - both good and evil.
— Richard Whatley
Your head is filling up...
— Matthew Sawyer
One of the biggest difficulties in our contemporary society is that we try to locate the evil in somebody else and then we try to get rid of him. The police are pigs or the students are worthless, and so on and so on. The Marxists are the devils or the Republicans are the devils or you name it. We try to isolate the evil and then get rid of it. But the teaching of the Bible is that we are thoroughly entrenched in this ourselves, so we can't toss rocks at someone else; we have to see the extent to which the moral ambiguities fall directly on us. We need forgiveness; and only when we receive it do we have our lives cleaned up so that we can start seeing situations accurately.
— John Warwick Montgomery, Situation Ethics
We feel a deep pleasure from realizing that we believe something in common with our friends, and different from most people. We feel an even deeper pleasure letting everyone know of this fact. This feeling is EVIL. Learn to see it in yourself, and then learn to be horrified by how thoroughly it can poison your mind. Yes evidence may at times force you to disagree with a majority, and your friends may have correlated exposure to that evidence, but take no pleasure when you and your associates disagree with others; that is the road to rationality ruin.
— Robin Hanson
- You take evil for good. It's a passing crisis. It's the result of your illness, perhaps.- You do despise me! It's simply that I don't want to do good, I want to do evil, and it has nothing to do with illness.- Why do evil?- So that everything will be destroyed. Oh, how nice it would be if everything were destroyed! You know, Alyosha, I sometimes think of doing a lot of harm. I would do it for a long while secretly and then suddenly everyone would find out. Everyone will stand around and point their fingers at me and I will look at them all. That would be awfully nice.
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
The unknown characters of writing seem to be endowed with an evil of life of their own as though sentient, and fain would wrest themselves forth from the parchment and wreak mischief on whomsoever gazes upon them.
— E. Hoffmann Price
Reforms will come as all great reforms have always come in ridding us of evils against both man and animal--not as we change our moral principles but as we discern and accept the implications of principles already held.
— Matthew Scully, Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy
More than once have I thought, Why does crime, even when as powerful as Cæsar, and assured of being beyond punishment, strive always for the appearances of truth, justice, and virtue? Why does it take the trouble? I consider that to murder a brother, a mother, a wife, is a thing worthy of some petty Asiatic king, not a Roman Cæsar; but if that position were mine, I should not write justifying letters to the Senate. But Nero writes. Nero is looking for appearances, for Nero is a coward. But Tiberius was not a coward; still he justified every step he took. Why is this? What a marvellous, involuntary homage paid to virtue by evil! And knowest thou what strikes me? This, that it is done because transgression is ugly and virtue is beautiful. Therefore a man of genuine æsthetic feeling is also a virtuous man. Hence I am virtuous.
— Henryk Sienkiewicz, Quo Vadis
Because When you write about people, you inevitably offend--but if you write about animals, the evil do not recognize themselves but the good understand immediately.
— Erica Jong, Sappho's Leap
When a person denies his conscience for too long, it can become seared. That person becomes susceptible to receiving and accepting all sorts of harmful and evil things. This is true for both believers and unbelievers. A seared conscience will open a person up to demonic spirits and activities.
— Henry Hon, ONE: Unfolding God's Eternal Purpose from House to House
The one who runs from his shadows sleeps with the devil at night.
— Robin Sacredfire
For every thinking and reflecting man the existence of evil is a riddle he cannot escape.
— François Petit, The Problem of Evil
we could eradicate smallpox from nature, but we could not uproot the virus from the human heart
— Richard Preston, The Demon in the Freezer
Do not be devilish.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
[She] sees. She knows. She understands. About evil, or whatever you care to name it. It comes. It's relentless. It doesn't care if you forgot it. It searches, and it finds you, and it arrives on your doorstep one day, and it lights up a screen, it calls you by your real name, it smiles at you, it says hello, it eyes your son and promises to take him home.
— Adam Sternbergh, The Blinds
There once was a kindly farmer who found a viper freezing on the ground in the snow. Please help me, the poor creature said, for I am too cold to live. The farmer took the viper and put it inside of his shirt, and the viper began to warm itself and come alive again. But upon coming alive, it bit the farmer most wretchedly, and as the farmer died, he asked the viper, but why? Why when I was so trusting of you?Because I am a viper, the snake replied. And one cannot expect kindness from evil.
— Rachel Caine, Viper and the Farmer
This secular Leftist denial of human free will is one of the reasons the Left recoils from labeling evil as evil, and (correctly) ascribes talk about good and evil to the religious.
— Dennis Prager, Still the Best Hope: Why the World Needs American Values to Triumph
Good always has a price, Marcus. Evil comes free.
— Donato Carrisi, The Lost Girls of Rome
Lo! there ye stand, my children," said the figure, in a deep and solemn tone, almost sad, with its despairing awfulness, as if his once angelic nature could yet mourn for our miserable race. "Depending upon one another's hearts, ye had still hoped that virtue were not all a dream! Now are ye undeceived! Evil is the nature of mankind. Evil must be your only happiness.
— Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mosses from an Old Manse
Reject evil. Choose the good.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
As long as you remember that fighting evil doesn't necessarily make you good! Good and evil are each other's enemies, but they are often found close together.
— Tonke Dragt, De brief voor de koning
Man is the bridge of good as much as evil. He hurts and he loves. He divides and he unites. He destroys and he rebuilds. He kills and he saves lives. Yet, he denies or pretends that he does not know the other side of him. He only knows of himself as the protagonist, the righteous, and the honorable one. Others, who do not belong to his fold, are the villains, the devils, and the low-life beings. Ironically, the less he knows of his other self the more he becomes what he derides and denigrates. He is the tragic paradox of what he claims to be despite the evidence of his action that proves otherwise. (Danny Castillones Sillada, Man: The Paragon of All Paradoxes)
— Danny Castillones Sillada
evil is, after all, only a deficiency of goodness.
— Dorothy Gilman, A Nun in the Closet
That’s the definition of evil right there: not faking it like everybody else.
— Charlie Jane Anders, All the Birds in the Sky
In Europe, what seems to bond toads and toadstools strongly is their shared role as potentially toxic "agents of death", and their close associations with magic and the supernatural. In Christian thought, both were seen to represent the dark and evil threads of nature's tapestry. Both appeared in late medieval art in representations of hell, particularly in the work of Flemish artists.
— Adrian Morgan
The human beings must be mentally immensely strong, during the encounter with the true malevolence in others, because on it's own it doesn't belong to their species.
— Mladen Đorđević, Svetioničar - Vesnici oluje
...if we are to become a land of homes and people, evil men must not be allowed to persist in their evil.
— Louis L'Amour, Brionne
The world won't be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.
— Albert Einstein
Evil thrives on apathy and cannot survive without it.
— Hannah Arendt
To be a pacifist in the face of evil is to be complicit with evil.
— J.Adam Snyder
When he admires the man he calls his father: a man slightly above the scum of the earth—what does that speak about he who admires him?
— Terry a O'Neal
What you must first understand is the very nature of the Verity. Humans have a tendency for darkness and light. To choose good or evil. But no such mixture exists for the Verity or the Void. The Void houses no light. The Verity embraces no darkness. So when the Verity seeks a new vessel, it always searches out the purest heart--the person least likely to be swayed by darkness. A heart so true has the capacity to love like no other. And a love like that? It changes a person.
— Sara Ella, Unblemished
Those who apparently do evil do it ultimately out of love, even if their actions are misguided for the moment.
— Shepherd Hoodwin, Loving from Your Soul: Creating Powerful Relationships
He looked like an evil male model, showing off what the fashionable college-age villain was wearing to Harvard this year.
— Rick Riordan, The Sea of Monsters
I am determined that never, if I can help it,Shall evil triumph over good." - Creon
— Sophocles, Antigone
There is always going to be evil as long as goodness lives on.
— K. Weikel, Hiding Behind A Mask
It’s a cruel joke of the universe that the one person who makes me come alive is himself dead. And evil. His very existence defies all moral laws and all known laws of physics.
— Kitty Thomas, The Last Girl
This, too, was myself. It seemed natural and human. In my eyes it bore a livelier image of the spirit, it seemed more express and single, than the imperfect and divided countenance I had been hitherto accustomed to call mine. And in so far I was doubtless right. I have observed that when I wore the semblance of Edward Hyde, none could come near to me at first without a visible misgiving of the flesh. This, as I take it, was because all human beings, as we meet them, are commingled out of good and evil: and Edward Hyde, alone in the ranks of mankind, was pure evil.
— Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Evil is anything that goes against life, harms life, stifles life, destroys life. Evil is bringing harm to another person, inflicting unnecessary pain, suffering, or confusion. All evil comes from this. This is the root of all evil.
— Anne Rice, Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis
Evil isn't born, Dearie. It's made.
— Rumplestiltskin, Once Upon A Time
He was in conflict with himself. There was no enjoyment in the thought that he had escaped a great danger, and in the midst of his uneasy reflections he had a sudden breathless conviction that she made him feel old because he loved her. Then he felt a hatred of himself, gathering into one mighty heap all the fierce and bitter hatred he had cherished for others and pouring it out on himself.
— Norbert Jacques, Dr. Mabuse, Der Spieler
Don't make a deal with the devil.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
I don't believe in raw evil." Noah said, "It doesn't care if you believe in it
— Maggie Stiefvater, Blue Lily, Lily Blue
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
— Alfred W. McCoy, Torture and Impunity: The U.S. Doctrine of Coercive Interrogation
I consider Yoda to be just about the most evil character that I’ve ever seen in the history of literature. I have gotten people into tongue-tied snits unable to name for me one scene in which Yoda is ever helpful to anybody, or says anything that’s genuinely wise. 'Do or do not, there is no try.' Up yours, you horrible little oven mitt! 'Try' is how human beings get better. That’s how people learn, they try some of their muscles, or their Force mechanism heads in the right direction, that part gets reinforced and rewarded with positive feedback, which you never give. And parts of it get repressed by saying, 'No, that you will not do!' It is abhorrent, junior high school Zen. It’s cartoon crap.
— David Brin
It seems to me that evil is a kind of ultimate greed, a greed that is so all-encompassing that it can't ever see anything lovely, rare, or precious without wanting to possess it. A greed so total that if it can't possess these things, it will destroy them rather than chance that someone else might have them. And a greed so intense that even having these things never causes it to lessen one iota -- the lovely, the rare and the precious never affect it except to make it want them.
— Mercedes Lackey, Arrow's Fall