"Half-instructed confessors have done my soul great harm; for I could not always have such learned ones as I would have desired. They certainly did not wish to deceive me, but the fact was that they knew no better. Of something which was a venial sin, they said it was no sin, and out of a very grave mortal sin they made a venial sin. This has done me such harm, that my speaking here of so great an evil, as a warning to others, will be readily understood."
Evil quotes
Evil
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Evil quotes (page 18 of 265)
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"It was important, Dumbledore said, to fight, and fight again, and keep fighting, for only then could evil be kept at bay, though never quite eradicated. . . ."
"To justify and extol human greed and egotism is to my mind not only immoral, but evil."
"This is the curse of an evil deed, that it incites and must bring forth more evil."
"Was aus Liebe getan wird, geschieht immer jenseits von Gut und Böse. (What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil.)"
"It is privilege that causes evil in the world, not wickedness, and not men."
"You may either win your peace or buy it: win it, by resistance to evil; buy it, by compromise with evil."
"It's only when a man tames his own demons that he becomes the king of himself if not of the world."
"After having exhausted all the arguments on behalf of evil, one utters the creed's dictums with nostalgia rather than with fervor."
"The melancholy joys of evils pass'd, For he who much has suffer'd, much will know."
"When evil men burn and bomb, good men must build and bind."
"The act of evil breeds others to follow, young sins in its own likeness."
"Shallow breathing is the root of all evil but conscious deep breathing restores and secures our souls."
"Human courtship has some wild extremes. At one end of the spectrum, there is harassment, pestering, blackmail, and an abuse of institutional power, which its targets rightly fear and loathe. At the other end is love, which as Nietzsche said, is beyond good and evil and always deserves our respect and compassion even when it is doomed or destructive. In the wide middle of the spectrum are all the ambiguous and tragi-comic goings-on of our species."
"I enjoy the bad things that are said about me. It enhances sales and makes me feel evil. I don't like to feel good 'cause I am good. But evil? Yes. It gives me another dimension."
"Don't be forecasting evil unless it is what you can guard against. Anxiety is good for nothing if we can't turn it into a defense."
"We do not know how to eliminate evil, but we do know how to feed some of the hungry and heal some of the infirmed."
"Pablo Casals is a very great artist. What I admire is the firm stand he has taken not only against the oppressors of his countrymen, but also against those opportunists who are always ready to compromise with the Devil. He perceives clearly that the world is in greater peril from those who tolerate or encourage evil than from those who actually commit it."
"You must be a poet, a lady of evil luck desiring to be what you are not, longing to be what you can only visit."
"The generality of men are naturally apt to be swayed by fear rather than reverence, and to refrain from evil rather because of the punishment that it brings than because of its own foulness."