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Good and Evil Quotes

Shakespeare, Kurt Vonnegut, Eric Hoffer, Cicero and Seneca lead. Tolstoy, in The First Step (1892), says that to be good and lead a good life means to give others more than one takes from them. Eleanor Farjeon, in two books from the early 1920s, makes a better joke of it: it is no use crying over spilt evils, it is better to mop them up laughing.

The line about fighting monsters and gazing into the abyss is credited to Mark Twain and marked misattributed. The notes give a German text and a modern translation, which is the Nietzsche version. The “pass through this world but once” passage, credited to Stephen Grellet, is disputed, and a passage on living for something, credited to Thomas Chalmers, is flagged misattributed.

Random quote on Good and Evil

Most quoted on good and evil:

Cease to do evil. Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow.

Isaiah

There was an evil in Pandora's box
Beyond all other ones, yet it came forth
In guise so lovely, that men crowded round
And sought it as the dearest of all treasure.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Who soweth good seed shall surely reap;
The year grows rich as it groweth old,
And life's latest sands are its sands of gold!

Julia Caroline Dorr

How near to good is what is fair!

Ben Jonson

Be good, sweet maid, and let who can be clever;
Do lovely things, not dream them, all day long;
And so make Life, and Death, and that For Ever,
One grand sweet song.

Charles Kingsley

He who would do good to another must do it in minute particulars;
General good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite, and flatterer:
For art and science cannot exist but in minutely organized Particulars.

William Blake Jerusalem The Emanation of The Giant Albion (1803)

Today I didn't even have to use my A.K.
I got to say it was a good day.

Ice Cube

The desire of the will is not satisfied by any good, as long as we believe that there is yet another beyond it. Therefore, the will is satisfied only by that one good beyond which there is no further good. What can this good be except the boundless God?

Marsilio Ficino Five Questions Concerning the Mind (1495)

There lives within the very flame of love
A kind of wick or snuff that will abate it;
And nothing is at a like goodness still;
For goodness, growing to a pleurisy,
Dies in his own too much.

William Shakespeare

The spread of evil is the symptom of a vacuum. Whenever evil wins, it is only by default: by the moral failure of those who evade the fact that there can be no compromise on basic principles.

Ayn Rand Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (1966)

When the Prophet saw injustice, either on the part of men or on the part of Providence, he did not inquire closely into its causes, nor bend the knee to necessity, and judge the evil-doers leniently; nor again did he give himself up to despair, or doubt the strength of Righteousness, or the possibility of its victory. He simply complained, pouring out his soul in words of fire; then went his way again, fighting for his ideal, and full of hope that in time—perhaps even "at the end of time"—Righteousness would be lord over all the earth.

Ahad Ha'am Selected Essays (1904)

When we think of evil, we think of something violent or demonic, something filled with hatred and wretchedly hungry to devour the good. But what if evil eats a salad at lunch and is polite, speaking rationally with nice table manners?

John Kass

Man needs a certain moral sense of right and wrong. There is such a thing called evil, and it is not the result of being a victim of society. You are just an evil man, prone to do evil things, and you have to be stopped from doing them.

Lee Kuan Yew

For who is there but you? who not only claim to be a good man and a gentleman, for many are this, and yet have not the power of making others good. Whereas you are not only good yourself, but also the cause of goodness in others.

Socrates

The good he scorned
Stalked off reluctant, like an ill-used ghost,
Not to return; or if it did, in visits
Like those of angels, short and far between.

Robert Blair

For all their luxury was doing good.

Samuel Garth

He that has light within his own cleer brest
May sit i'th center, and enjoy bright day,
But he that hides a dark soul, and foul thoughts
Benighted walks under the mid-day Sun;
Himself is his own dungeon.

John Milton

The crest and crowning of all good,
Life’s final star, is Brotherhood;
For it will bring again to Earth
Her long-lost Poesy and Mirth;
Will send new light on every face,
A kingly power upon the race.
And till it come, we men are slaves,
And travel downward to the dust of graves.

Edwin Markham The Man with the Hoe and Other Poems (1899)

Evil events from evil causes spring.

Aristophanes

You're good for Madge or good for Cis
Or good for Kate, maybe:
But what's to me the good of this
While you're not good for me?

Christina Rossetti

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