“Nothing could be without its opposite that was bound up with it. Could space exist in a building without objects that stopped it? Could energy exist without matter, or matter without energy? Matter and energy, the inert and the active, once considered opposites, were now known to be one.”
Source: Strangers on a Train
“You make it sound so simple.
It is, for the most part. Love is complicated, it can be downright ugly, but with the two of you it can be nothing but beautiful in the end.”
Source: Fading Memories
“It is not man who is bad, greedy, or evil — or at least his capacity for such things is extremely limited — it is men, or rather mobs and those who incite and direct them who are the problem.”
Source: A Rare and Dangerous Beast
“We have learned of evil, though not as the Evil One wished us to learn. We have learned better than that, and know it more, for it is waking that understands sleep and not sleep that understands waking. There is an ignorance of evil that comes from being young: there is a darker ignorance that comes from doing it, as men by sleeping lose the knowledge of sleep.”
“To the grim poor there need be no pour quoi tale about where evil arises; it just arises; it always is. One never learns how the witch became wicked, or whether that was the right choice for her—is it ever the right choice? Does the devil ever struggle to be good again, or if so is he not a devil? It is at the very least a question of definitions.”
Source: Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
“It isn’t hard to find evil in this world,' said the Witch. 'Evil is always more easily imagined than good.”
Source: Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
“He questioned now his heresy on the score of sin. It was possible that, after all, the theologians might be right. Whether sin and evil were convertible terms he could not be sure. But not only was he quite sure that there was no lack of evil in the world; he actually began to wonder if evil were not the positive force that fashions the destinies of men, whilst good is but a form of resistance which, however strong, remains passive, or else, when active, commonly operates through evil that it may ultimately prevail.”
Source: Bellarion
“For [Iris] Murdoch, the essential immoral act is the inability to see other people correctly. Human beings, she finds, are self-centered beings, anxiety-ridden and resentful. We are constantly representing people to ourselves in self-serving ways, in ways that gratify our egos and serve our ends. We stereotype and condescend, ignore and dehumanize. And because we don’t see people accurately, we treat them wrongly. Evil happens when people are unseeing, when they don’t recognize the personhood in other human beings.”
Source: How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen
“The most ominous of modern perversions is
the shame of appearing naïve if we do not flirt
with evil.”
Source: Nicolas Gomez Davila: An Anthology
“There is nothing in our experience, however trivial, worldly, or even evil, which cannot be thought about christianly.”
Source: The Christian Mind: How Should a Christian Think?