Skip to content

The more skillfully the language of goodness is assumed, the greater the depravity.

— Publilius Syrus The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus (1856)

Another quote →

Topics

Good and Evil

More quotes by Publilius Syrus

Confession of our faults is the next thing to innocence.

Conversation is the image of the mind; as the man, so is his speech.

Pardon one offence and you encourage the commission of many.

The judge is condemned when the guilty is acquitted.

It is a bad plan that admits of no modification.

All Publilius Syrus quotes →

You may also like

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