100 Quotes About Good And Evil

And this is the forbidden truth, the unspeakable taboo - that evil is not always repellent but frequently attractive; that it has the power to make of us not simply victims, as nature and accident do, but active accomplices. Joyce Carol Oates

War as a moral metaphor is limited, limiting, and dangerous. By reducing the choices of action to “a war against” whatever-it-is, you divide the world into Me or Us (good) and Them or It (bad) and reduce the ethical complexity and moral richness of our life to Yes/No, On/Off. This is puerile, misleading, and degrading. In stories, it evades any solution but violence and offers the reader mere infantile reassurance. All too often the heroes of such fantasies behave exactly as the villains do, acting with mindless violence, but the hero is on the “right” side and therefore will win. Right makes might. Unknown

I make mistakes, but I am on the side of Good, " the Golux said, "by accident and happenchance. I had high hopes of being Evil when I was two, but in my youth I came upon a firefly burning in a spider's web. I saved the victim's life."" The firefly's ?" said the minstrel." The spider's. The blinking arsonist had set the web on fire. James Thurber

People do terrible things. People do beautiful things. It's against the black backdrop of evil that the shining light of good shows the brightest. We can't just focus on the darkness of the night, or we'll miss out on the stars. Wendy Mills

Don't consider painful what's good for you. Deborah Harkness

You've got ice in your veins, but you're smart enough to keep it from freezing your heart. Tijan

The boundary between good and evil are clearer for more common folks but gets blurred more and more as people get more power over their fellows. Bangambiki Habyarimana

So, I guess we are who we are for a lot of reasons. And maybe we'll never know them. But even if we don't have the power to choose where we come from, we can still choose where we go from there. We can still do things. And we can try and feel okay about them. Stephen Chbosky

She looked at her shelves, filled with books in which the bad stuff that happened to people was caused by things like witches who lured people into the woods. In a weird way, the world seemed to make more sense that way. Anne Ursu

People may be persuaded that the machine is doing good. In fact, good is only capable of being done on a small scale. Evil is more versatile. You can hate those you have never seen, all the vast multitudes of them, but you can only love those you know – and that with difficulty. John Christopher

We refused to be what world want us to be- BAD. We are what we are- GOOD. And that's the way it is going to be. Nurudeen Ushawu

Media has the ability to make good seem evil and evil seem good. Duncan William Gibbons

The image that comes to mind is a boxing ring. There are times when..you just want that bell to ring, but you're the one who's losing. The one who's winning doesn't have that feeling. Do you have the energy and strength to face life? Life can ask more of you than you are willing to give. And then you say, 'Life is not something that should have been. I'm not going to play the game. I'm going to meditate. I'm going to call "out".'There are three positions possible. One is the up-to-it, and facing the game and playing through. The second is saying, Absolutely not. I don't want to stay in this dogfight. That's the absolute out. The third position is the one that says, This is mixed of good and evil. I'm on the side of the good. I accept the world with corrections. And may [the world] be the way I like it. And it's good for me and my friends. There are only the three positions. Joseph Campbell

Take heart. You're not alone. Every broken heart breathes again. That's life. It goes on. In loss, and in gain. Fakeer Ishavardas

Learn to accept life in toto. A perfect life is only in the dream world. This, my dear, with all it's heartaches, is it. Our world. Fakeer Ishavardas

The inability to rise above one's inherited ism and ideology makes one live and die a fool, just a folly. Fakeer Ishavardas

To live unhappily, is failing life. Fakeer Ishavardas

Any religion that cannot stand up to a modern scientific reasoning, and to rational proof, is asinine Fakeer Ishavardas

Who knew what evil lurked in the hearts of men? A copper, that's who. (..)You saw how close men lived to the beast. You realized that people like Carcer were not mad. They were incredibily sane. They were simply men without a shield. They'd looked at the world and realized that all the rules didn't have to apply to them, not if they didn't want them to. They weren't fooled by all the little stories. They shook hands with the beast. Terry Pratchett

For when once people have begun to believe that prosperity is the reward of virtue, their next calamity is obvious. If prosperity is regarded as the reward of virtue it will be regarded as the symptom of virtue. Men will leave off the heavy task of making good men successful. He will adopt the easier task of making out successful men good. G.k. Chesterton

You speak as if this is a good world with a little evil in it. Rubbish. It's a hellish one where the best a man can do is put a little sanity back and look after his own. David Hewson

I like the word ‘evil’. Scramble it a little and you will get ‘vile’ and ‘live’. ‘Good’, on the other hand, is just a command to ‘go do’. Jodi Picoult

I was profoundly impressed by my contact with these places which are and have always been, the wellsprings of your history. It makes one think that the men who created your country never lost sight of their moral bearings. They did not laugh at the absolute nature of the concepts of "good" and "evil." Their practical policies were checked against their moral compass. And how surprising it is that a practical policy computed on the basis of moral considerations turned out to be the most farsighted and the most salutary. This is true even though in the short term one may wonder: Why all this morality? Let's just get on with the immediate job. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

..we know there's a third choice. An alternative to staying simon-pure or bathing in the filth and the slime. It's the alternative that grown-ups all over the world pick. You balance off your walk through the hog-wallow against what it gains you. You choose the lesser of two evils and try to keep your good intentions on front of you. And I guess you judge how well you're doing by how well you sleep at night..and what your dreams are like. Stephen King

It is hard to be sure of anything among so many marvels. The world is all grown strange... How shall a man judge what to do in such times?' 'As he ever has judged, ' said Aragorn. 'Good and ill have not changed since yesteryear; nor are they one thing among Elves and Dwarves and another among Men. It is a man's part to discern them, as much in the Golden Wood as in his own house. J.r.r. Tolkien

Not God, but man-made gods kill, by self-will. Fakeer Ishavardas

If we can somehow survive this world, we would've achieved something in this world. Fakeer Ishavardas

In each of us, two natures are at war — the good and the evil. All our lives the fight goes on between them, and one of them must conquer. But in our own hands lies the power to choose — what we want most to be we are. Robert Louis Stevenson

Only one kind of species of animals bites the hand that feeds them - mankind. Fakeer Ishavardas

So you've given away the old good and evil? asked Rose, amazed at all this rare talk from Quick.No. No. I'll stay a cop. But it's not us and them anymore. It's us and us and us. It's always us. That's what they never tell you. Geez, Rose, I just want to do right. But there's no monsters, only people like us. Funny, but it hurts. Tim Winton

Humans are beasts, until tamed. Fakeer Ishavardas

You’re either good, or you’re clever. Mackenzi Lee

In a war the most dangerous thing is to understand the enemy. To understand is to forgive. And wehave no right to do that–we never have had, not since the creation of the world. Sergei Lukyanenko

The robot said, “I have been trying, friend Julius, to understand some remarks Elijah made to me earlier. Perhaps I am beginning to, for it suddenly seems to me that the destruction of what should not be, that is, the destruction of what you people call evil, is less just and desirable than the conversion of this evil into what you call good.” He hesitated, then, almost as though he were surprised at his own words, he said, “Go, and sin no more! . R. Daneel Olivaw

The kosmos works by harmony of tensions, like lyre and bow. Good and evil are one. On the one hand God sees all as well, fair, and good; on the other hand a human being sees injustice here, justice there. Justice in our minds is strife. We cannot help but see war makes us as we are. Heraclitus

There is always a choice. Always. So do not say, you had no choice. Good or bad, doing it or not, is about you, not choices. Always. Fakeer Ishavardas

Of course it was horrible, ' smiled Dr. Branom. 'Violence is a very horrible thing. That's what you're learning now. Your body is learning it. Anthony Burgess

When he passed me in the restaurant, " he said at last, "I had a curious impression. It was as though a wild animal — an animal savage, but savage! you understand — had passed me by."" And yet he looked altogether of the most respectable."" Précisément! The body — the cage — is everything of the most respectable — but through the bars, the wild animal looks out."" You are fanciful, mon vieux, " said M. Bouc. "It may be so. But I could not rid myself of the impression that evil had passed me by very close." (1.2.52-56) . Agatha Christie

At the same time there was the good of the poor and the good of the rich. And the good of the whites, the blacks and the yellow races.. More and more goods came into being, corresponding to each sect, race and class.. People began to realise how much blood had been spilt in the name of a petty, doubtful good, in the name of the struggle of this petty good against what is belied to be evil. Sometimes the very concept of good became a scourge, a greater evil than evil itself. Vasily Grossman

Today religious nuts outnumber monkey nuts in the world. Fakeer Ishavardas

If I bad mouth the Truth, and nothing but the Absolute Truth, then, kick my butt. Otherwise, ye of bad faith, keep your stupid trap shut. Fakeer Ishavardas

Life is too short to bullshit. Fakeer Ishavardas

Good and evil are a great deal more complex than a princess and a dragon, or a wolf and a scarlet-clad little girl. And is not the dragon the hero of his own story? Erin Morgenstern

Come, let me know whether thou art acreature of good or not.' And he replied: `I am a man. Unknown

Conquer evil with good deeds. Lailah Gifty Akita

Every morning most of the people wake up alive than dead, so I do have a faith there is still some goodness left in the man. Amit Kalantri

...I like to see things through the lens of Greek tragedy, which teaches us, among other things, that real tragedy is never a straightforward confrontation between Good and Evil, but is rather much more exquisitely and much more agonizingly, a conflict between two irreconcilable views of the world. Daniel Mendelsohn

There is no virtue or vice in a transitive verb, everything depends on the direct object. 'I LOVE' could be virtuous or not - you could love ice cream, Jesus, child porn, my country, hurting people, the lust of the flesh. Love is not an automatic virtue. Hatred is not an automatic vice. What's the direct object? from Debate In The Age Of The Glitter-Bomb in The City, Fall 2013. Douglas Wilson

It’s easy to be a hero when your own survival is aligned with someone else’s, when your victory is a victory for your entire clan. Delilah S. Dawson

Sometimes, the wicked will tell us things just to confuse us—to haunt our thoughts long after we've faced them. Sarah J. Maas

I hope that real love and truth are stronger in the end than any evil or misfortune in the world. Charles Dickens

You are good when you walk to your goal firmly and with bold steps. Yet you are not evil when you go thither limping. For those who limp go not backwards. But you who are strong and swift, see that you do not limp before the lame, deeming it kindness. Kahlil Gibran

Being against evil doesn't make you good. Tonight I was against it and then I was evil myself. I could feel it coming just like a tide... I just want to destroy them. But when you start taking pleasure in it you are awfully close to the thing you're fighting. Ernest Hemingway

And one of the elders of the city , said , speak to us of good and evil. And he answered :You are good in countless ways , and you are not evil when you are not good . Kahlil Gibran

It's going to be like an..aura, I guess." He looked down at me and raised an eyebrow. "Explain?""Like even though there are outside forces pushing through the walls, in here it's like a bubble of goodness. Like coming home." I could feel him smiling and it encouraged me to elaborate. "When I think of how others would see it, I imagine them seeing a force of goodness overshadowing a force of evil, protecting it. . Jessica Shirvington

Perhaps man was neither good nor bad, was only a machine in an insensate universe--his courage no more than a reflex to danger, like the automatic jump at the pin-prick. Perhaps there were no virtues, unless jumping at pin-pricks was a virtue, and humanity only a mechanical donkey led on by the iron carrot of love, through the pointless treadmill of reproduction. T.h. White

Within the infant rind of this small flower Poison hath residence and medicine power. For this, being smelt, with that part cheers each part; Being tasted, stays all senses with the heart. Two such opposèd kings encamp them still, In man as well as herbs–grace and rude will. And where the worser is predominant, Full soon the canker death eats up that plant.( Inside the little rind of this weak flower, there is both poison and powerful medicine. If you smell it, you feel good all over your body. But if you taste it, you die. There are two opposite elements in everything, in men as well as in herbs–good and evil. When evil is dominant, death soon kills the body like cancer.) . William Shakespeare

And I reckon them that are good must suffer for it the same as them that are bad. William Faulkner

Men who believe in good and evil, and who believe that good should win, should watch for those moments when it is possible to play God John Irving

Deep inside, the majority of people had the sneaking suspicion that evil was more powerful than good and could be counteracted only by more evil. Randall Garrett

There are two godheads: the world and my independent I. I am either happy or unhappy, that is all. It can be said: good or evil do not exist. A man who is happy must have no fear. Not even in the face of death. Only a man who lives not in time but in the present is happy. Ludwig Wittgenstein

Don't make another's pain the source of your own happiness. Mark Frost

Simply put...there is a vast ocean of shit that you people don't know shit ab Sgt. Abraham Ford

It is well, I think, for us to learn to tell evil from good; but it has its price, as everything does. We leave our evil friend behind. Gene Wolfe

Sully disapproved of destruction for destruction's sake, which seemed ever more popular in the modern world, but he always took delight in burning out or otherwise eliminating Evil when Evil just couldn't keep its ugly head down and stay in the shadows, when it came right at you with all teeth bared. The world needed a little Evil, so Good had something to compare itself to, but you couldn't let it think it had the right-of-way on the road and an invitation to dinner. Dean Koontz

Most modern reproducers of life, even including the camera, really repudiate it. We gulp down evil, choke at good. Wallace Stevens

But while I have never considered myself a very good person, neither can I bring myself to believe that I am spectacularly bad one. Perhaps it's simply impossible to think of oneself in such a way. Donna Tartt

[But] I fear that in the individual lives of all but a few, the balance is in debit - we do so little that is positive good, even if we negatively avoid what is actively evil. J.r.r. Tolkien

Right and wrong stood for him as immutable as the two poles. He had never wandered in that twilight country where the nuances of evil and good cast their perplexing shadows. P.D. James

Although Quirrell couldn’t fend off the dark allure of power, he did provide Harry with a lesson that guided him through the rest of his school career: there is no such thing as good and evil. We become the choices that we make. Pottermore Limited

One man's god is another man's devil. D.J. LeMarr

The little mutton-chopped man interrupted them to point out that in his opinion good was not the avoidance of evil, but something more positive than that: it was making the world a better place. Neil Gaiman

We're the gray area, angel. We're the pieces of the puzzle they don't know what to do with, the pieces that don't quite fit into their perfect little picture, so they choose to discard us, to keep their image untainted, but we can only be ignored for so long. Because eventually, whether they want to admit it or not, all of their black and white will bleed together anyway. J.m. Darhower

Well, let folly be our cloak, a veil before the eyes of the Enemy! For he is very wise, and weighs all things to a nicety in the scales of his malice. But the only measure that he knows is desire, desire for power; and so he judges all hearts. Into his heart the thought will not enter that any will refuse it, that having the Ring we may seek to destroy it. If we seek this, we shall put him out of reckoning. . J.r.r. Tolkien

You know, ” Naomi said, “if you’re looking at hundreds of people burning to death as a problem solving itself, that may be more evidence that you’re on wrong side. James S.A. Corey

Unto the pure ‪#‎ALL‬ things are pure: but unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure; but even their mind and conscience is defiled. Titus 1:15.Dinesh Samuel Thank you. T H E Y SEE EVIL IN YOU BECUASE THEY ARE FULL OF IT.some so called Believers think am against the message. some so called Unbelievers think am going crazy and defends the message. They are all right, because I BELONG TO JESUS ALONE. In Christ Alone.1 Corinthians 13:7 kjv6 Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; 7Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. 8Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. 9For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. 10But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. Mary Tornyenyor

That's who I am, a man who has been both good and evil throughout his life. pg 14 Paulo Coelho

You're not trying to find the answer to a question, you're simply trying to confirm something you desperately want to believe: that everyone is evil. Paulo Coelho

...she was betting on the fact that people were basically good, despite all the Evil in the world. Paulo Coelho

The thing is, you can't ever really know how rotten someone will turn out to be. Jennifer Donnelly

Good and bad are not opposites, they are both just different forms of intensity. Elizabeth Wurtzel

There was something strange in my sensations, indescribably new and incredibly sweet. I knew myself, at the first breath of this new life, to be tenfold more wicked and the thought delighted me like wine. Robert Louis Stevenson

I used to think this was all about good and evil, ” said Rickett, “but it’s not.”“ No?”“ There’s a kind of evil that isn’t even in opposition to good, because good is an irrelevance to it. It’s a foulness that’s right at the heart of existence, born with the stuff of the universe. It’s in the decay to which all things tend. It is, and it always will be, but in dying we leave it behind.”“ And while we’re alive?”“ We set our souls against it, and our saints and angels, too.” He patted Parker on the shoulder. “Especially the destroying ones. John Connolly

Nothing in the Grimmerie on how to depose a tyrant - nothing useful... Nothing there that described why men and women could turn out so horrible. Or so wonderful - if that ever happens anymore. Gregory Maguire

Never think taking a life is easy. Do that and in a way they win. Raymond E. Feist

I love all life as my own. Therefore, I say, you're my very own. But am I, an infidel who does not believe in your ism, also your own? Fakeer Ishavardas

The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Right or wrong is nonexistent in the eye of the universe. It doesn't matter who is right or who is wrong because the universe never cares for both. The universe lets both happen and the universe lets both end. A natural disaster claims all lives. Life and resources is the one that matters. No matter who you are or what you are, you must never harm life and you must never spend resources. These are what matters. I don't know about the afterlife. I don't know whether the afterlife exists, but in this existence, these are what matters. Andreas Laurencius

Babies aren't born cruel or filled with sick desire. Evil is not intrinsic. It's fashioned. Ellen Hopkins

I, on the other hand, am very concerned about how word choice will affect my readers. For instance, in the description of Genesis, I chose the term 'good and evil' instead of 'right and wrong', which are basically two same terms. I wanted to use 'right and wrong' because it definitely will ignite more controversies than 'good and evil', but I chose to use the latter because I was afraid of the social influence that can come from reading my book, and although there is no adult material at all in the book, I could risk getting my book banned. Andreas Laurencius