"One soweth and another reapeth" is a verity that applies to evil as well as good.--_George Eliot._
It is certain that there is no good without the knowledge of God, that only as we approach him are we happy, and that the ultimate good is to know him certainly; that we are unhappy in proportion as we are removed from him, and that the greatest evil would be certainty of the opposite.
_Midrasch Tillim_ says the same thing, and that God will free the good nature of man from the evil.
"By this we shall know that ye are gods. Yea, do good, or do evil, if you can. Come now and let us reason together.
Life is to be considered happy, not in warding off evil, but in the acquisition of good: and this we should seek for by employment of some kind or by reflection.
He who does evil that good may come, pays a toll to the devil to let him into heaven.
Sunt bona mixta malis, sunt mala mixta bonis=--Good is mixed with evil, and evil with good.
The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinions of others, to do so would be wise, or even right. These are good reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or visiting him with any evil, in case he do otherwise.
It is an argument of a candid, ingenuous mind to delight in the good name and commendations of others; to pass by their defects and take notice of their virtues; and to speak or hear willingly of the latter; for in this indeed you may be little less guilty than the evil speaker, in taking pleasure in evil, though you speak it not.--_Leighton._
where there is darkness, there is light. Where there is evil, there is good.
There is no evil but is mingled with good.
Woe unto them that call evil<b> good, and good >evil.
Envy offends with false infamy, that is to say, by detraction which frightens virtue. Envy must be represented with the hands raised to heaven in contempt, because if she could she would use her power against God. Make her face covered with a goodly mark; show her as wounded in the eye by a palm-branch, and wounded in the ear by laurel and myrtle, to signify that victory and truth offend her. Draw many thunderbolts proceeding from her as a symbol of her evil-speaking. Make her lean and shrivelled up, because she is continual dissolution. Make her heart gnawed by a swelling serpent. Make her a quiver full of tongues for arrows, because she often offends with these. Make her a leopard's skin, because the leopard kills the lion through envy and by deceit. Place a vase in her hand full of flowers, and let it be full also of scorpions, toads and other reptiles. Let her ride Death, because Envy, which is undying, never wearies of sovereignty. {134} Make her a bridle loaded with divers arms, because her weapons are all deadly. As soon as virtue is born it begets envy which attacks it; and sooner will there exist a body without a shadow than virtue unaccompanied by envy.
Governments, wherein the will of every one has a just influence… has its evils,… the principal of which is the turbulence to which it is subject. But weigh this against the oppressions of monarchy, and it becomes nothing. Malo periculosam libertatem quam quietam servitutem. [I prefer the tumult of liberty to the quiet of servitude.] Even this evil is productive of good. It prevents the degeneracy of government, and nourishes a general attention to the public affairs. [Letter to James Madison, 1787. ME 6:64.]
Um Gut's zu thun, braucht's keiner Ueberlegung; / Der Zweifel ist's, der Gutes bose macht, / Bedenke nicht! gewahre wie du's fuhlst=--To do good needs no consideration; it is doubt that makes good >evil. Don't reflect; do good as you feel.
Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.
Now you see, Lone Starr, that evil will always triumph, because good is dumb.
Not a vileness such as renders us incapable of good, nor a holiness exempt from evil.
We need greater virtues to sustain good than evil fortune.
He= (your Father) =maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.
Free men are aware of the imperfection inherent in human affairs, and they are willing to fight and die for that which is not perfect. They know that basic human problems can have no final solutions, that our freedom, justice, equality, etc. are far from absolute, and that the good life is compounded of half measures, compromises, lesser evils, and gropings toward the perfect. The rejection of approximations and the insistence on absolutes are the manifestation of a nihilism that loathes freedom, tolerance, and equity.
Nichts Boses thun ist gut; / Nichts Boses wollen ist besser=--To do nothing evil is good; to wish nothing evil is better.
No man can be brave who considers pain to be the greatest evil of life; nor temperate, who considers pleasure to be the highest good.
Let a man overcome anger by love, let him overcome evil by good; let him overcome the greedy by liberality, the liar by truth.
Jer. vii. 21. "What avails it you to add sacrifice to sacrifice? For I spake not unto your fathers, when I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt offerings or sacrifices: But this thing commanded I them, saying, Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and ye shall be my people. For it was only after they had sacrificed to golden calves that I gave myself sacrifices to turn into good an evil custom." Jer. vii. 4. "Trust not in lying words, saying, The temple of the Lord, The temple of the Lord, The temple of the Lord, are these."
Unfortunately, it is much easier to shut one's eyes to good than to evil. Pain and sorrow knock at our doors more loudly than pleasure and happiness; and the prints of their heavy footsteps are less easily effaced.
First degree: to be blamed for doing evil, and praised for doing good. Second degree: to be neither praised nor blamed.
Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide, In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side; Some great cause, God's new Messiah offering each the bloom or blight, Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep upon the right; And the choice goes by forever 'twixt that darkness and that light.
"And don't tell me God works in mysterious ways", Yossarian continued "There's nothing mysterious about it, He's not working at all. He's playing. Or else He's forgotten all about us. That's the kind of God you people talk about, a country bumpkin, a clumsy, bungling, brainless, conceited, uncouth hayseed. Good God, how much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to include such phenomena as phlegm and tooth decay in His divine system of Creation? What in the world was running through that warped, evil, scatalogical mind of His when He robbed old people of the power to control their bowel movements? Why in the world did He ever create pain?"
The evil that men do lives after them; / The good is oft interred with their bones.
There is some soul of goodness in things evil, / Would men observingly distil it out.
With how little pride a Christian believes himself united to God, with how little abasement does he rank himself with the worms of earth. What a way is this to receive life and death, good and evil.
Youth ever thinks that good whose goodness or evil he sees not.
For the sake of one good action a hundred evil actions should be condoned.
And would'st thou evil for his good repay?
There has been no entirely new religion since the beginning of the world. The elements and roots of religion were there, as far back as we can trace the history of man; and the history of religion shows us throughout a succession of new combinations of the same radical elements. An intuition of God, a sense of human weakness and dependence, a belief in a Divine government of the world, a distinction between good and evil, and a hope of a better life, these are some of the radical elements of all religions. Though sometimes hidden, they rise again and again to the surface. Though frequently distorted, they tend again and again to their perfect form. Unless they had formed part of the original dowry of the human soul, religion would have remained an impossibility, and the tongues of angels would have been to human ears but as sounding brass, or as tinkling cymbals.
Tribulation is God's threshing--not to destroy us, but to get what is good, heavenly, and spiritual in us separated from what is wrong, earthly, and fleshly. Nothing less than blows of pain will do this. The evil clings so to the good, the golden wheat of goodness in us is so wrapped up in the strong chaff of the old life that only the heavy flail of suffering can produce the separation.--_J. R. Miller._
Hear much and speak little; for the tongue is the instrument of the greatest good and the greatest evil that is done in this world.
From lower to the higher next, Not to the top, is Nature's text; And embryo Good, to reach full stature, Absorbs the Evil in its nature.
Two urns by Jove's high throne have ever stood,-- The source of evil one, and one of good.
Quotes by people born this day, already used as QOTD: Where the market works, I'm for that. Where the government is necessary, I'm for that. I'm deeply suspicious of somebody who says, "I'm in favor of privatization," or, "I'm deeply in favor of public ownership." I'm in favor of whatever works in the particular case.
~Government.~--The proper function of a government is to make it easy for people to do good and difficult for them to do evil.--_Gladstone._
A quien tiene buena muger, ningun mal le puede venir, que no sea de sufrir=--To him who has a good wife no evil can come which he cannot bear.
We have long since emerged from the heroic childhood of our race, when good and evil could be met with the same "frolic welcome"; the attempts to escape from evil, whether Indian or Greek, have ended in flight from the battle-field; it remains to us to throw aside the youthful over-confidence and the no less youthful discouragement of nonage. We are grown men, and must play the man
There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.
We cannot know, we cannot name the Divine, nor can we understand its ways as manifested in nature and human life. We ask why there should be suffering and sin, we cannot answer the question. All we can say is, it is willed to be so. Some help our human understanding may find, however, by simply imagining what would have been our life if the power of evil had not been given us. It seems to me that in that case we, human beings as we are, should never have had a conception of what is meant by good: we should have been like the birds in the air, happier, it may be, but better, no. Or if suffering had always been reserved for the bad, we should all have become the most cunning angels. Often when I am met by a difficulty which seems insoluble, I try that experiment, and say, Let us see what would happen if it were otherwise. Still, I confess there is some suffering on earth which goes beyond all understanding, which even the truest Christian love and charity seems unable to remove or mitigate. It can teach us one thing only, that we are blind, and that in the darkness of the night we lose our faith in a Dawn which will drive away darkness, fear, and despair. Much, no doubt, could be done even by what is now called Communism, but what in earlier days was called Christianity. And then one wonders whether the world can ever again become truly Christian. I dare not call myself a Christian. I have hardly met the men in all my life who deserved that name. Again, I say, let us do our best, knowing all the time that our best is a mere nothing.
No one easily arrives at the conclusion that reason and a brave will are given us that we may not only hold back from evil, but also from the extreme of good.
There is so much of good among the worst, so much of evil in the best, such seeming partialities in providence, so many things to lessen and expand, yea, and with all man's boast, so little real freedom of his will, that to look a little lower than the surface, garb, or dialect, or fashion, thou shalt feebly pronounce for a saint, and faintly condemn for a sinner.
The false justice of Pilate only caused the suffering of Jesus Christ; for he caused him to be scourged by his false justice, and then slew him. It would have been better that he had slain him at first. Thus is it with those who are falsely just. They do good works or evil to please the world, and show that they are not altogether of Jesus Christ, for they are ashamed of him. Then at last in great temptations and on great occasions, they slay him.
Whoso rewardeth evil for good, evil shall not depart from his house.
We need greater virtues to sustain good than evil fortune.
So farewell hope, and with hope farewell fear, Farewell remorse; all good to me is lost. Evil, be thou my good.
Die Thatigkeit ist was den Menschen glucklich macht; / Die, erst das Gute schaffend, bald ein Uebel selbst / Durch gottlich wirkende Gewalt in Gutes kehrt=--It is activity which renders man happy, which, by simply producing what is good, soon by a divinely working power converts an evil itself into a good.
Cornelius Celsus: Knowledge is the supreme good, the supreme evil is physical pain. We are composed of two separate parts, the soul and the the body; the soul is the greater of these two, the body the lesser. Knowledge appertains to the {8} greater part, the supreme evil belongs to the lesser and baser part. Knowledge is an excellent thing for the mind, and pain is the most grievous thing for the body. Just as the supreme evil is physical pain, so is wisdom the supreme good of the soul, that is to say of the wise man, and no other thing can be compared with it.
One impulse from a vernal wood May teach you more of man, Of moral evil and of good, Than all the sages can.
Men use, if they have an evil turn, to write it in marble, and whoso doth us a good turn we write it in dust.
If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?
Love is a familiar; love is a devil: there is no evil angel but love. Yet was Samson so tempted, and he had an excellent strength; yet was Solomon so seduced, and he had a very good wit.
All nature is but art unknown to thee. / All chance, direction which thou canst not see. / All discord, harmony not understood; / All partial evil, universal good.
To do no evil is good; to intend none is better.
You begin in error when you suggest that we should regard the opinion of the many about just and unjust, good and evil, honourable and dishonourable.
This superstition, for the tenacious vitality of which the idealistic philosophers who are, more or less, disciples of Plato and the theologians who have been influenced by them, are responsible, assumes that matter is something, not merely inert and perishable, but essentially base and evil-natured, if not actively antagonistic to, at least a negative deadweight upon, the good.
Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it. My optimism, then, does not rest on the absence of evil, but on a glad belief in the preponderance of good and a willing effort always to cooperate with the good, that it may prevail.
Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same? And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so? Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.
To know evil of others and not speak it, is sometimes discretion; to speak evil of others and not know it, is always dishonesty. He may be evil himself who speaks good of others upon knowledge, but he can never be good himself who speaks evil of others upon suspicion.
Ein Theil bin ich von jener Kraft, / Die stets das Bose will und stets das Gute schafft=--I am a part of that power which continually wills the evil and continually creates the good.
Health, beauty, vigor, riches, and all the other things called goods, operate equally as evils to the vicious and unjust as they do as benefits to the just.--_Plato._
This is all they have been able to discover to console them in so many evils. But it is a miserable consolation, since it does not serve for the cure of the evil, but simply for the concealment of it for a short time, and its very concealment prevents the thought of any true cure. Thus by a strange inversion of man's nature he finds that the weariness which is his most sensible evil, is in some measure his greatest good, because more than any thing else it contributes to make him seek his true healing, and that the diversion which he regards as his greatest good is in fact his greatest evil, because more than any thing else it prevents his seeking the remedy for his evils. Both of these are admirable proofs of man's misery and corruption, and at the same time of his greatness, since man is only weary of all things, and only seeks this multitude of occupations because he has the idea of a lost happiness. And not finding this in himself, he seeks it vainly in external things, without being able to content himself, because it is neither in us, nor in the creature, but in God alone.
Shall we receive good at the hands of the Lord, and shall we not receive evil?
To do evil that good may come of it is for bunglers in politics as well as morals.
Pia fraus=--A pious fraud (either for good or evil).
The eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the evil and the good.
Truth does not do as much good in the world as the shows of it do of evil.
In spite of all the evil that is said of the unfortunates, kings sometimes have their good qualities too.
To each, therefore, must be given his own share of goods, and the distribution of created goods, which, as every discerning person knows, is laboring today under the gravest evils due to the huge disparity between the few exceedingly rich and the unnumbered propertyless, must be effectively called back to and brought into conformity with the norms of the common good, that is, social justice. [ Quadragesimo Anno , § 58, 1931.]
It is difficult to do good without multiplying the sources of evil.
We should not be too hasty in bestowing either our praise or censure on mankind, since we shall often find such a mixture of good and evil in the same character, that it may require a very accurate judgment and a very elaborate inquiry to determine on which side the balance turns.
What is life but the choice of that good which contains the least of evil!
In every human character and transaction there is a mixture of good and evil: a little exaggeration, a little suppression, a judicious use of epithets, a watchful and searching skepticism with respect to the evidence on one side, a convenient credulity with respect to every report or tradition on the other, may easily make a saint of Laud, or a tyrant of Henry the Fourth.--_Macaulay._
The cross of Christ is the key of Paradise; the weak man's staff; the convert's convoy; the upright man's perfection; the soul and body's health; the prevention of all evil, and the procurer of all good.
Remember, darkness does not always equate to evil, just as light does not always bring good.
I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.
Der Bose hat nicht nur die Guten, sondern auch die Bosen gegen sich=--The bad man has not only the good, but also the evil opposed to him.
Though all afflictions are evils in themselves, yet they are good for us, because they discover to us our disease and tend to our cure.--_Tillotson._
From seeming evil still educing good.
To bear up under loss to fight the bitterness of defeat and the weakness of grief to be victor over anger to smile when tears are close to resist evil men and base instincts to hate hate and to love love to go on when it would seem good to die to seek ever after the glory and the dream to look up with unquenchable faith in something evermore about to be that is what any man can do, and so be great.
~Envy.~--A man who hath no virtue in himself ever envieth virtue in others; for men's minds will either feed upon their own good, or upon others' evil; and who wanteth the one will prey upon the other.--_Lord Bacon._
The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose! / An evil soul producing holy witness / Is like a villain with a smiling cheek, / A goodly apple rotten at the heart.
People’s good deeds we write in water. The evil deeds are etched in brass.
For good and evil must in our actions meet; / Wicked is not much worse than indiscreet.
An action may be good if done at a fitting season, or evil if done at an improper time.
~Diet.~--Regimen is better than physic. Every one should be his own physician. We ought to assist, and not to force nature: but more especially we should learn to suffer, grow old, and die. Some things are salutary, and others hurtful. Eat with moderation what you know by experience agrees with your constitution. Nothing is good for the body but what we can digest. What medicine can procure digestion? Exercise. What will recruit strength? Sleep. What will alleviate incurable evils? Patience.--_Voltaire._
Bon? leges malis ex moribus procreantur=--Good laws grow out of evil acts.
No true joy but in doing good and no true sorrow but in doing evil.
"And remember: Evil will always prevail, because Good is dumb."