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The best of our fiction is by novelists who allow that it is as good as they can give, and the worst by novelists who maintain that they could do much better if only the public would let them.

— J. M. Barrie The Contemporary Review (1891)

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Good and Evil

More quotes by J. M. Barrie

To look upon you was to rejoice that so fair a thing could be; to think of you is still to be young.

The Little Minister (1891)

Shall we make a new rule of life from tonight: always to try to be a little kinder than is necessary?

The Little White Bird (1902)

We never understand how little we need in this world until we know the loss of it.

Margaret Ogilvy (1897)

Those who bring sunshine into the lives of others cannot keep it from themselves.

Christ's Second Coming Fulfilled (1917)

Never ascribe to an opponent motives meaner than your own.

All J. M. Barrie quotes →

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False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.

Socrates

I believe in evil. It is the property of all those who are certain of truth. Despair and fanaticism are only differing manifestations of evil.

Edward Teller

Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.

C. S. Lewis God in the Dock (1970)

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root, and it may be that he who bestows the largest amount of time and money on the needy is doing the most by his mode of life to produce that misery which he strives in vain to relieve.

Henry David Thoreau Walden (1854)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: J. M. Barrie (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.