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An evil-speaker differs from an evil-doer only in the want of opportunity.

Maledicus a malefico non distat nisi occasione.

Original text (Latin)

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Good and Evil

More quotes by Quintilian

Too exact, and rather studious of similitude than of beauty.

For it is feeling and force of imagination that makes us eloquent.

Nothing is more dangerous to men than a sudden change of fortune.

It is fitting that a liar should be a man of good memory.

The perfection of art is to conceal art.

In Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922)

All Quintilian quotes →

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

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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)

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