Evil Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Evil. Here they are! All 100 of them:

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Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
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Anonymous (Holy Bible: New International Version)
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I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil.
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J.R.R. Tolkien (The Return of the King (The Lord of the Rings, #3))
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When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it--always.
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Mahatma Gandhi
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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.
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Gregory Maguire (Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (The Wicked Years, #1))
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May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house.
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George Carlin
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The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it.
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Albert Einstein
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There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.
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Socrates
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Remember, darkness does not always equate to evil, just as light does not always bring good.
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P.C. Cast (Betrayed (House of Night, #2))
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The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.
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Plato
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The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
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Edmund Burke
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Evil is always possible. And goodness is eternally difficult.
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Anne Rice (Interview with the Vampire (The Vampire Chronicles, #1))
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Between two evils, I always pick the one I never tried before.
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Mae West
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Well-read people are less likely to be evil.
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Lemony Snicket (The Slippery Slope (A Series of Unfortunate Events, #10))
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Dogs are our link to paradise. They don't know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring--it was peace.
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Milan Kundera
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Never open the door to a lesser evil, for other and greater ones invariably slink in after it.
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Baltasar GraciΓ‘n (The Art of Worldly Wisdom: A Pocket Oracle)
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There is no good and evil, there is only power and those too weak to seek it.
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J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Harry Potter, #1))
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The surest defense against Evil is extreme individualism, originality of thinking, whimsicality, evenβ€”if you willβ€”eccentricity.
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Joseph Brodsky
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Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?
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Epicurus
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People are afraid of themselves, of their own reality; their feelings most of all. People talk about how great love is, but that’s bullshit. Love hurts. Feelings are disturbing. People are taught that pain is evil and dangerous. How can they deal with love if they’re afraid to feel? Pain is meant to wake us up. People try to hide their pain. But they’re wrong. Pain is something to carry, like a radio. You feel your strength in the experience of pain. It’s all in how you carry it. That’s what matters. Pain is a feeling. Your feelings are a part of you. Your own reality. If you feel ashamed of them, and hide them, you’re letting society destroy your reality. You should stand up for your right to feel your pain.
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Jim Morrison
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Do not accept an evil you can change.
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E. Lockhart (We Were Liars)
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Knowledge is power. Power to do evil...or power to do good. Power itself is not evil. So knowledge itself is not evil.
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Veronica Roth (Allegiant (Divergent, #3))
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Can we just call them storm spirits?” Leo asked. β€œVenti makes them sound like evil espresso drinks.
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Rick Riordan (The Lost Hero (The Heroes of Olympus, #1))
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Let gratitude be the pillow upon which you kneel to say your nightly prayer. And let faith be the bridge you build to overcome evil and welcome good.
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Maya Angelou (Celebrations: Rituals of Peace and Prayer)
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Man is the cruelest animal.
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Friedrich Nietzsche
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We are all mistaken sometimes; sometimes we do wrong things, things that have bad consequences. But it does not mean we are evil, or that we cannot be trusted ever afterward.
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Alison Croggon
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Is it better for a man to have chosen evil than to have good imposed upon him?
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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Evil begins when you begin to treat people as things.
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Terry Pratchett (I Shall Wear Midnight (Discworld, #38; Tiffany Aching, #4))
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There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.
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Martin Luther King Jr.
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Lawful good to lawful evil!" said Simon, pleased. "He's quoting Dungeons and Dragons," said Clary. "Ignore him.
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Cassandra Clare (City of Ashes (The Mortal Instruments, #2))
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That which is done out of love is always beyond good and evil.
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Friedrich Nietzsche
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How easy it is to judge rightly after one sees what evil comes from judging wrongly.
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Elizabeth Gaskell (Wives and Daughters)
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Human reason can excuse any evil; that is why it's so important that we don't rely on it.
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Veronica Roth (Divergent (Divergent, #1))
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Why do they always teach us that it's easy and evil to do what we want and that we need discipline to restrain ourselves? It's the hardest thing in the world--to do what we want. And it takes the greatest kind of courage. I mean, what we really want.
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Ayn Rand
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All men make mistakes, but a good man yields when he knows his course is wrong, and repairs the evil. The only crime is pride.
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Sophocles (Antigone (The Theban Plays, #3))
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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?
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Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956 (Abridged))
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So much good, so much evil. Just add water.
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Markus Zusak (The Book Thief)
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I stopped believing there was a power of good and a power of evil that were outside us. And I came to believe that good and evil are names for what people do, not for what they are.
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Philip Pullman (The Amber Spyglass (His Dark Materials, #3))
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I would rather be a little nobody, then to be a evil somebody.
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Abraham Lincoln
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Most of the evil in this world is done by people with good intentions.
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T.S. Eliot
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You see, that is the sad, sorry, terrible thing about sarcasm. It's really funny.
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Brandon Sanderson (Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians (Alcatraz, #1))
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No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.
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Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
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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.
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Jim Butcher (Vignette (The Dresden Files, #5.5))
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The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then β€” to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.
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T.H. White (The Once and Future King)
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Stupidity is the same as evil if you judge by the results.
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Margaret Atwood (Surfacing)
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Attack the evil that is within yourself, rather than attacking the evil that is in others.
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Confucius
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All that we are is the result of what we have thought: it is founded on our thoughts and made up of our thoughts. If a man speak or act with an evil thought, suffering follows him as the wheel follows the hoof of the beast that draws the wagon.... If a man speak or act with a good thought, happiness follows him like a shadow that never leaves him.
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Gautama Buddha
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The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist; a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain.
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Ursula K. Le Guin (The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas)
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We all have a Monster within; the difference is in degree, not in kind.
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Douglas Preston (The Monster of Florence)
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Hear no evil, speak no evil, and you won't be invited to cocktail parties.
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Oscar Wilde
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No one is born evil, just like no one is born alone. They become that way, through choice and circumstance.
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Victoria Aveyard (Glass Sword (Red Queen, #2))
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I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.
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Mahatma Gandhi (The Essential Gandhi: An Anthology of His Writings on His Life, Work, and Ideas)
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With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil - that takes religion.
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Steven Weinberg
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Somewhere inside me is a merciful, forgiving person. Somewhere there is a girl who tries to understand what people are going through, who accepts that people do evil things and that desperation leads them to darker places than they ever imagined. I swear she exists, and she hurts for the repentant boy I see in front of me. But if I saw her, I wouldn't recognize her.
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Veronica Roth (Divergent (Divergent, #1))
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Well, here at last, dear friends, on the shores of the Sea comes the end of our fellowship in Middle-earth. Go in peace! I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil.
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J.R.R. Tolkien (The Return of the King (The Lord of the Rings, #3))
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But magic is neither good nor evil. It is a tool, like a knife. Is a knife evil? Only if the wielder is evil.
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Rick Riordan (The House of Hades (The Heroes of Olympus, #4))
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Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer; nothing is more difficult than to understand him.
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Fyodor Dostoevsky
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Judging others makes us blind, whereas love is illuminating. By judging others we blind ourselves to our own evil and to the grace which others are just as entitled to as we are.
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Dietrich Bonhoeffer (The Cost of Discipleship)
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I hope that real love and truth are stronger in the end than any evil or misfortune in the world.
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Charles Dickens
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Ignorance, the root and stem of every evil.
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Plato
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He felt that there is a loose balance of good and evil, and that the art of living consists in getting the greatest good out of the greatest evil.
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Machado de Assis (IaiΓ‘ Garcia)
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There is, I believe, in every disposition a tendency to some particular evil, a natural defect, which not even the best education can overcome." "And your defect is a propensity to hate everybody." "And yours," he replied with a smile, "is wilfully to misunderstand them.
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Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)
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For all evils there are two remedies - time and silence.
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Alexandre Dumas (The Count of Monte Cristo)
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The first step to loving someone else is to recognize the evil in ourselves, so we can forgive them.
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Veronica Roth (Allegiant (Divergent, #3))
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Sometimes, the wicked will tell us things just to confuse us–to haunt our thoughts long after we've faced them.
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Sarah J. Maas (Throne of Glass (Throne of Glass, #1))
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What was there to be gained by fighting the most evil wizard who has ever existed?" said Black, with a terrible fury in his face. "Only innocent lives, Peter!" "You don't understand!" whined Pettigrew. "He would have killed me, Sirius!" "THEN YOU SHOULD HAVE DIED!" roared Black. "DIED RATHER THAN BETRAY YOUR FRIENDS, AS WE WOULD HAVE DONE FOR YOU!
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J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Harry Potter, #3))
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Gentle reader, may you never feel what I then felt! May your eyes never shed such stormy, scalding, heart-wrung tears as poured from mine. May you never appeal to Heaven in prayers so hopeless and so agised as in that hour left my lips: for never may you, like me, dread to be the instrument of evil to what you wholly love.
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Charlotte BrontΓ« (Jane Eyre)
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Hope, in reality, is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.
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Friedrich Nietzsche
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Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.
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Blaise Pascal (PensΓ©es)
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Neither love nor evil conquers all, but evil cheats more.
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Laurell K. Hamilton (Cerulean Sins (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, #11))
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We can buy you one of those books they have for little kids 'Timmy Has Two Dads'. Except I don't think they have one called 'Timmy Has Two Dads and One of Them Was Evil'. That part you're just going to have to work through on your own.
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Cassandra Clare (City of Fallen Angels (The Mortal Instruments, #4))
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This is an important lesson to remember when you're having a bad day, a bad month, or a shitty year. Things will change: you won't feel this way forever. And anyway, sometimes the hardest lessons to learn are the ones your soul needs most. I believe you can't feel real joy unless you've felt heartache. You can't have a sense of victory unless you know what it means to fail. You can't know what it's like to feel holy until you know what it's like to feel really fucking evil. And you can't be birthed again until you've died.
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Kelly Cutrone (If You Have to Cry, Go Outside: And Other Things Your Mother Never Told You)
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You must see with eyes unclouded by hate. See the good in that which is evil, and the evil in that which is good. Pledge yourself to neither side, but vow instead to preserve the balance that exists between the two.
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Hayao Miyazaki
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Leo: "So...giants who can throw mountains. Friendly wolves that will eat us if we show weakness. Evil espresso drinks. Gotcha. Maybe this isn't the best time to bring up my psycho babysitter." Piper: "Is that another joke?
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Rick Riordan (The Lost Hero (The Heroes of Olympus, #1))
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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.
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Mikhail Bulgakov (The Master and Margarita)
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I believe that there is one story in the world, and only one. . . . Humans are caughtβ€”in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity tooβ€”in a net of good and evil. . . . There is no other story. A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done wellβ€”or ill?
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John Steinbeck (East of Eden)
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Why not think that sometimesβ€”just sometimesβ€”you can overcome evil with silence? And let people hear their hatefulness in their own ears, without distraction. Maybe goodness is enough to expose evil for what it really is, sometimes.
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Sylvain Reynard (Gabriel's Inferno (Gabriel's Inferno, #1))
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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.
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J.R.R. Tolkien (The Return of the King (The Lord of the Rings, #3))
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What is your name?" she murmured. He cocked an eyebrow at her and then went back to staring at his brother. "I'm the evil one, in case you haven't figured it out." "I wanted your name, not your calling." "Being a bastard's more of a compulsion, really. And it's Zsadist. I am Zsadist.
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J.R. Ward (Lover Eternal (Black Dagger Brotherhood, #2))
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A fight is going on inside me," said an old man to his son. "It is a terrible fight between two wolves. One wolf is evil. He is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego. The other wolf is good. he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you." The son thought about it for a minute and then asked, "Which wolf will win?" The old man replied simply, "The one you feed.
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Wendy Mass (Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life)
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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." Tessa looked at will. "What about you? What do you believe? "Pulvis et umbra sumus," said Will, not looking at her as he spoke. "I believe we are dust and shadows. What else is there?
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Cassandra Clare (Clockwork Angel (The Infernal Devices, #1))
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We have come from God, and inevitably the myths woven by us, though they contain error, will also reflect a splintered fragment of the true light, the eternal truth that is with God. Indeed only by myth-making, only by becoming 'sub-creator' and inventing stories, can Man aspire to the state of perfection that he knew before the Fall. Our myths may be misguided, but they steer however shakily towards the true harbour, while materialistic 'progress' leads only to a yawning abyss and the Iron Crown of the power of evil.
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J.R.R. Tolkien
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A Native American elder once described his own inner struggles in this manner: Inside of me there are two dogs. One of the dogs is mean and evil. The other dog is good. The mean dog fights the good dog all the time. When asked which dog wins, he reflected for a moment and replied, The one I feed the most.
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George Bernard Shaw
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Murderers are not monsters, they're men. And that's the most frightening thing about them.
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Alice Sebold (The Lovely Bones)
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Belikov is a sick, evil man who should be thrown into a pit of rabid vipers for the great offense he commited against you this morning." "Thank you." I said primly. Then, I considered. "Can vipers be rabid?" "I don't see why not. Everything can be. I think. Canadian geese might be worse than vipers, though." "Canadian geese are deadlier than vipers?" "You ever try to feed those little bastards? They're vicious. You get thrown to vipers, you die quickly. But the geese? That'll go on for days. More suffering." "Wow. I don't know whether I should be impressed or frightened that you've thought about all of this.
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Richelle Mead (Frostbite (Vampire Academy, #2))
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By now, it is probably very late at night, and you have stayed up to read this book when you should have gone to sleep. If this is the case, then I commend you for falling into my trap. It is a writer's greatest pleasure to hear that someone was kept up until the unholy hours of the morning reading one of his books. It goes back to authors being terrible people who delight in the suffering of others. Plus, we get a kickback from the caffeine industry...
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Brandon Sanderson (Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians (Alcatraz, #1))
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Because I can't help doing it," he said with a shrug. "And hey, if I keep loving you, maybe you'll eventually crack and love me too. Hell, I'm pretty sure you're already half in love with me." "I am not! And everything you just said is ridiculous. That's terrible logic." Adrian returned to his crossword puzzle. "Well, you can think what you want, so long as you remember-no matter how ordinary things seem between us-I'm still here, still in love with you, and care about you more than any other guy, evil or otherwise, ever will." "I don't think you're evil." "See? Things are already looking promising.
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Richelle Mead (The Indigo Spell (Bloodlines, #3))
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Life moves on, whether we act as cowards or heroes. Life has no other discipline to impose, if we would but realize it, than to accept life unquestioningly. Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, evil, can become a source of beauty, joy, and strength, if faced with an open mind. Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such
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Henry Miller
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If Jem dies, I cannot be with Tessa,” said Will. β€œBecause it will be as if I were waiting for him to die, or took some joy in his death, if it let me have her. And I will not be that person. I will not profit from his death. So he must live.” He lowered his arm, his sleeve bloody. β€œIt is the only way any of this can ever mean anything. Otherwise it is only —” β€œPointless, needless suffering and pain? I don’t suppose it would help if I told you that was the way life is. The good suffer, the evil flourish, and all that is mortal passes away,” Magnus said. β€œI want more than that,” said Will. β€œYou made me want more than that. You showed me I was only ever cursed because I had chosen to believe myself so. You told me there was possibility, meaning. And now you would turn your back on what you created.
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Cassandra Clare (Clockwork Princess (The Infernal Devices, #3))
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The problem was you had to keep choosing between one evil or another, and no matter what you chose, they sliced a little bit more off you, until there was nothing left. At the age of 25 most people were finished. A whole god-damned nation of assholes driving automobiles, eating, having babies, doing everything in the worst way possible, like voting for the presidential candidates who reminded them most of themselves. I had no interests. I had no interest in anything. I had no idea how I was going to escape. At least the others had some taste for life. They seemed to understand something that I didn't understand. Maybe I was lacking. It was possible. I often felt inferior. I just wanted to get away from them. But there was no place to go.
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Charles Bukowski
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Then you're aping him. Valentine was one of the most arrogant and disrespectful men I've ever met. I suppose he brought you up to be just like him." "Yes," Jace said, unable to help himself, "I was trained to be an evil mastermind from a young age. Pulling the wings off flies, poisoning the earth's water supply β€” I was covering that stuff in kindergarten. I guess we're all just lucky my father faked his own death before he got to the raping and pillaging part of my education, or no one would be safe.
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Cassandra Clare (City of Ashes (The Mortal Instruments, #2))
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When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: the people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous and surly. They are like this because they can't tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own - not of the same blood and birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can hurt me. No one can implicate me in ugliness. Nor can I feel angry at my relative, or hate him. We were born to work together like feet, hands and eyes, like the two rows of teeth, upper and lower. To obstruct each other is unnatural. To feel anger at someone, to turn your back on him: these are unnatural.
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Marcus Aurelius (Meditations)
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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.
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Richard Adams (Watership Down)
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According to the thesaurus... and according to me... there are over thirty different meanings and substitutions for the word mean. (I quickly yell the following words; the entire class flinches- including Will) Jackass, jerk, cruel, dickhead, unkind, harsh, wicked, hateful, heartless, vicious, virulent, unrelenting, tyrannical, malevolent, atrocious, bastard, barbarous, bitter, brutal, callous, degenerate, brutish, depraved, evil, fierce, hard, implacable, rancorous, pernicious, inhumane, monstrous, merciless, inexorable. And my personal favoriteβ€”asshole.
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Colleen Hoover (Slammed (Slammed, #1))
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Because humans are complicated beasts, the monster said. How can a queen be both a good witch and a bad witch? How can a prince be a murderer and a saviour? How can an apothecary be evil-tempered but right-thinking? How can a parson be wrong-thinking but good-hearted? How can invisible men make themselves more lonely by being seen? "I don't know," Connor shrugged, exhausted. "Your stories never made any sense to me." The answer is that it does not matter what you think, the monster said, because your mind will contradict itself a hundred times each day. You wanted her to go at the same time you were desperate for me to save her. Your mind will believe comforting lies while also knowing the painful truths that make those lies necessary. And your mind will punish you for believing both.
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Patrick Ness (A Monster Calls)
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Have you ever seen anything quite as pathetic?" said Malfoy. "And he’s supposed to be our teacher!" Harry and Ron both made furious moves toward Malfoy, but Hermione got there first - SMACK! She had slapped Malfoy across the face with all the strength she could muster. Malfoy staggered. Harry, Ron, Crabbe, and Goyle stood flabbergasted as Hermione raised her hand again. "Don’t you dare call Hagrid pathetic you foulβ€”you evilβ€”" "Hermione!" said Ron weakly and he tried to grab her hand as she swung it back. "Get off Ron!" Hermione pulled out her wand. Malfoy stepped backward. Crabbe and Goyle looked at him for instructions, thoroughly bewildered. "C’mon," Malfoy muttered, and in a moment, all three of them had disappeared into the passageway to the dungeons. "Hermione!" Ron said again, sounding both stunned and impressed.
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J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Harry Potter, #3))
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I discovered that my obsession for having each thing in the right place, each subject at the right time, each word in the right style, was not the well-deserved reward of an ordered mind but just the opposite: a complete system of pretense invented by me to hide the disorder of my nature. I discovered that I am not disciplined out of virtue but as a reaction to my negligence, that I appear generous in order to conceal my meanness, that I pass myself off as prudent because I am evil-minded, that I am conciliatory in order not to succumb to my repressed rage, that I am punctual only to hide how little I care about other people’s time. I learned, in short, that love is not a condition of the spirit but a sign of the zodiac.
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Gabriel GarcΓ­a MΓ‘rquez (Memories of My Melancholy Whores)
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Out of my thoughts! You are part of my existence, part of myself. You have been in every line I have ever read, since I first came here, the rough common boy whose poor heart you wounded even then. You have been in every prospect I have ever seen since – on the river, on the sails of the ships, on the marshes, in the clouds, in the light, in the darkness, in the wind, in the woods, in the sea, in the streets. You have been the embodiment of every graceful fancy that my mind has ever become acquainted with. The stones of which the strongest London buildings are made, are not more real, or more impossible to displace with your hands, than your presence and influence have been to me, there and everywhere, and will be. Estella, to the last hour of my life, you cannot choose but remain part of my character, part of the little good in me, part of the evil. But, in this separation I associate you only with the good, and I will faithfully hold you to that always, for you must have done me far more good than harm, let me feel now what sharp distress I may. O God bless you, God forgive you!
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Charles Dickens (Great Expectations)
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Stories have changed, my dear boy,” the man in the grey suit says, his voice almost imperceptibly sad. β€œThere are no more battles between good and evil, no monsters to slay, no maidens in need of rescue. Most maidens are perfectly capable of rescuing themselves in my experience, at least the ones worth something, in any case. There are no longer simple tales with quests and beasts and happy endings. The quests lack clarity of goal or path. The beasts take different forms and are difficult to recognize for what they are. And there are never really endings, happy or otherwise. Things keep overlapping and blur, your story is part of your sister’s story is part of many other stories, and there in no telling where any of them may lead. Good and evil are a great deal more complex than a princess and a dragon, or a wolf and a scarlet-clad little girl. And is not the dragon the hero of his own story? Is not the wolf simply acting as a wolf should act? Though perhaps it is a singular wolf who goes to such lengths as to dress as a grandmother to toy with its prey.
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Erin Morgenstern (The Night Circus)
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First of all, love is a joint experience between two persons β€” but the fact that it is a joint experience does not mean that it is a similar experience to the two people involved. There are the lover and the beloved, but these two come from different countries. Often the beloved is only a stimulus for all the stored-up love which had lain quiet within the lover for a long time hitherto. And somehow every lover knows this. He feels in his soul that his love is a solitary thing. He comes to know a new, strange loneliness and it is this knowledge which makes him suffer. So there is only one thing for the lover to do. He must house his love within himself as best he can; he must create for himself a whole new inward world β€” a world intense and strange, complete in himself. Let it be added here that this lover about whom we speak need not necessarily be a young man saving for a wedding ring β€” this lover can be man, woman, child, or indeed any human creature on this earth. Now, the beloved can also be of any description. The most outlandish people can be the stimulus for love. A man may be a doddering great-grandfather and still love only a strange girl he saw in the streets of Cheehaw one afternoon two decades past. The preacher may love a fallen woman. The beloved may be treacherous, greasy-headed, and given to evil habits. Yes, and the lover may see this as clearly as anyone else β€” but that does not affect the evolution of his love one whit. A most mediocre person can be the object of a love which is wild, extravagant, and beautiful as the poison lilies of the swamp. A good man may be the stimulus for a love both violent and debased, or a jabbering madman may bring about in the soul of someone a tender and simple idyll. Therefore, the value and quality of any love is determined solely by the lover himself. It is for this reason that most of us would rather love than be loved. Almost everyone wants to be the lover. And the curt truth is that, in a deep secret way, the state of being beloved is intolerable to many. The beloved fears and hates the lover, and with the best of reasons. For the lover is forever trying to strip bare his beloved. The lover craves any possible relation with the beloved, even if this experience can cause him only pain.
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Carson McCullers (The Ballad of the Sad CafΓ© and Other Stories)
β€œ
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.
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Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged)