#wickedness

In morals what begins in fear usually ends in wickedness; in religion what begins in fear usually ends in fanaticism. Fear, either as a principle or a motive, is the beginning of all evil. ↗

— Anna Jameson

#begins #either #ends #evil #fanaticism

The doctor sees all the weakness of mankind; the lawyer all the wickedness, the theologian all the stupidity. ↗

— Arthur Schopenhauer

#doctor #lawyer #mankind #sees #stupidity

You are vain and wicked- as a genius should be. ↗

— Günter Grass

#vanity #wickedness #vanity

Of all the living, man is the most wicked. Love for the good it has done or hate it for all the bad. ↗

— Sachidanand Das

#wickedness #love

She also understood there was a hole in her heart where her son should be, that she was a wicked, selfish woman for wishing him back. ↗

— Shannon Celebi

#mother #motherhood #mothers #mothers-love #selfish

The best reason for committing loathsome and detestable acts--and let's face it, I am considered something of an expert in this field--is purely for their own sake. Monetary gain is all very well, but it dilutes the taste of wickedness to a lower level that is obtainable by anyone with an overdeveloped sense of avarice. True and baseless evil is as rare as the purest good--and we all know how rare that is... ↗

— Jasper Fforde

#detestable #dilutes #evil #expert #good

I inquired what wickedness is, and I didn't find a substance, but a perversity of will twisted away from the highest substance – You oh God – towards inferior things, rejecting its own inner life and swelling with external matter. ↗

— Augustine of Hippo

#sin #wickedness #life

Isn’t that the way God works? She’d thought. He takes the things in our lives that are ugly, disgusting, and downright wicked, and transforms them into something magnificent. ↗

— J.E.B. Spredemann

#god #grace #mercy #transformation #ugliness

I loathe, detest, hate and abominate the block, the gibbet, the rack, the pillory and the faggots with equal passion," said the old man vehemently. "Not only are they devilishly cruel but they are not even common sense. They do not lesson the evil in the world, they increase it, by making those who handle these cruelties as wicked as those who suffer them. No, I'm wrong, more wicked, for there is always some expiation made in the endurance of suffering and none at all in the infliction of it. ↗

— Elizabeth Goudge

#suffering #wickedness #equality

If you think that you're so smart and holy, that means you haven't yet realized that a part of what we experience today...is a result of our stupidity and wickedness in the past. ↗

— Toba Beta

#smartness #stupidity #wickedness #experience