#evil

No evil can result from its inhibition more pernicious than its toleration. ↗

— Martin Van Buren

#inhibition #more #pernicious #result #than

I am trying now to be entirely honest. I did actually comfort in the thought that the Devil had, on Strawless Common, defeated God. I much preferred that thought to the thought that God hadn't cared, hadn't helped Robin. I thought all the way back to the story of Eden. God, all-loving, all-wise, had surely wanted people to be happy and healthy and good; it was the Devil who spoiled it all...and since so many people were miserable and sickly and bad the Devil must indeed by very powerful. The lifeless, voiceless thing, lately a singing boy, which they had cut down and put under a sack in the barn to await an unhallowed cross-road grave seemed to me to prove the power of the Devil." Lady Alice Rowhedge ↗

— Norah Lofts

#eden #god #love

And – I think you know, don’t you? – that I love you, Anne.’ I feel as if I have been living in a loveless world for too long. The last tender face I saw was my father’s when he sailed for England. ‘You do? Truly?’ ‘I do.’ He rises to his feet and pulls me up to stand beside him. My chin comes to his shoulder, we are both dainty, long-limbed, coltish: well-matched. I turn my face into his jacket. ‘Will you marry me?’ he whispers. ‘Yes,’ I say. ↗

— Philippa Gregory

#love #marriage #match #richard-iii #love

The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness. ↗

— Joseph Conrad

#belief #capable #every #evil #men

The best men are not consistent in good-- why should the worst men be consistent in evil. ↗

— Wilkie Collins

#good-and-evil #mr-hartright #men

Then Pa looked straight at Laura and said, 'You girls keep away from the camp. When you go walking. don't go near where the men are working, and you be sure you're back here before they come in for the night. There's all kinds of rough men working on the grade and using rough language, and the less you see and hear of them the better. Now remember, Laura. And you too, Carrie.' Pa's face was very serious. 'Yes, Pa' Laura promised, and Carrie almost whispered , 'Yes, Pa.' Carrie's eyes were large and frightened. She did not want to hear rough language, whatever rough language might be. Laura would have liked to hear some, just once, but of course she must obey Pa. ↗

— Laura Ingalls Wilder

#men

There were a billion lights out there on the horizon and I knew that all of them put together weren't enough to light the darkness in the hearts of some men. ↗

— Michael Connelly

#evil #hearts #lights #psychology #psychopaths

Indifference to me, is the epitome of all evil. ↗

— Elie Wiesel

#ayn-rand #evil #evil-men #objectivism #psychopathic-personalities

It's now what enters men's mouths that's evil. It's what comes out of their mouths that is. ↗

— Paulo Coelho

#language #mouth #tongue #men

Men who give up the common goal of all things that exist, thereby cease to exist themselves. Some may perhaps think it strange that we say that wicked men, who form the majority of men, do not exist; but that is how it is. I am not trying to deny the wickedness of the wicked; what I do deny is that their existence is absolute and complete existence. Just as you might call a corpse a dead man, but couldn't simply call it a man, so I would agree that the wicked are wicked, but could not agree that they have unqualified existence. ↗

— Boethius

#good #happiness #men