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Only the mediocre are always at their best.

— Jean Giraudoux Attributed The Beauty Principal (1984)

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Good and Evil

More quotes by Jean Giraudoux

The flower is the poetry of reproduction. It is an example of the eternal seductiveness of life.

The Enchanted (1933)

Young girls are the chatelaines of truth; they must see that it is protected, that the guilty lead the life of the guilty, even if the world rocks on its foundations.

Electra (1937)

As soon as war is declared it will be impossible to hold the poets back. Rhyme is still the most effective drum.

Tiger at the Gates (1935)

You're an attorney! It's your duty to lie, conceal, and distort everything, and slander everybody.

A golf course is the epitome of all that is purely transitory in the universe; a space not to dwell in, but to get over as quickly as possible.

All Jean Giraudoux 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: Jean Giraudoux (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.