Skip to content

Often the fear of one evil leads us into a worse.

— Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux The Art of Poetry (1674)

Souvent la peur d'un mal nous conduit dans un pire.

Original text (French)

Another quote →

Topics

Good and Evil

More quotes by Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux

Honor is like an island, rugged and without a beach; once we have left it, we can never return.

Satires (1716)

Time flies and draws us with it. The moment in which I am speaking is already far from me.

Épitres (1701)

Hasten slowly, and without losing heart,
Put your work twenty times upon the anvil.

The Art of Poetry (1674)

Happy the poet who with ease can steer
From grave to gay, from lively to severe.

The Art of Poetry (1674)

Every age has its pleasures, its style of wit, and its own ways.

The Art of Poetry (1674)

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