Quotes & Sayings About Evil And Doing Nothing

To relinquish a present good through apprehension of a future evil is in most instances unwise ... from a fear which may afterwards turn out groundless, you lost the good that lay within your grasp. — Francesco Guicciardini

Those who observe suffering are tempted to reject God; those who experience it often cannot give up on God, their solace and their agony." The presence of so many in church on a wintry night proved his point. "You can protest against the evil in the world only if you believe in a good God," Volf also said. "Otherwise the protest doesn't make sense. — Philip Yancey

Of all the evil man can do, the greatest is doing nothing. — Jury Nel

There is no evil that the father's love cannot pardon and cover, there is no sin that is a match for his grace. — Timothy Keller

Overpowered by the sadness of not knowing what there is in the world, and what I'm doing. Feeling completely indifferent to good and evil too, to beauty or anything else. I know that this is the root of all human troubles, all of them. Indifferent to that knowledge, too. Nothing got written. — Jack Kerouac

She knew it should bother her more, being evil and all, but after she put on a little mascara and some lipstick and poured herself another cup of blood-laced coffee, she found that she was okay with it. — Christopher Moore

In love there are two evils: war and peace. — Horace

What we experience in dreams - assuming that we experience it often - belongs in the end just as much to the over-all economy of our soul as anything experienced "actually": we are richer or poorer on account of it. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Something's still wrong
the same thing that was wrong forty years ago. A malignancy, a tumor, slowly growing in someone's heart. A conscience that's seared. — Heather Day Gilbert

He remarked that thinking often spoils everything and that evil usually begins with our thoughts. — Brother Lawrence

150 The Arhat IN OUR SOCIETY, we're inclined to see doing nothing as something negative, even evil. But when we lose ourselves in activities, we diminish our quality of being. We do ourselves a disservice. It's important to preserve ourselves, to maintain our freshness and good humor, our joy and compassion. In Buddhism we cultivate aimlessness, and in fact in Buddhist tradition the ideal person, an arhat or a bodhisattva, is a businessless person - someone with nowhere to go and nothing to do. People should learn how to just be there, doing nothing. — Thich Nhat Hanh

The calendar hath not an evil day
For souls made one by love, and even death
Were sweetness, if it came like rolling waves
While they two clasped each other, and foresaw
No life apart. — George Eliot

The wish to be super-strong is a healthy wish, a vital, compelling, power-producing desire. The more the Superman-Wonder Woman picture stories build up this inner compulsion by stimulating the child's natural longing to battle and overcome obstacles, particularly evil ones, the better chance your child has for self-advancement in the world. — William Moulton Marston

As I have defined it, love is the antithesis of laziness. Ordinary laziness is a passive failure to love. Some ordinarily lazy people may not lift a finger to extend themselves unless they are compelled to do so. Their being is a manifestation of nonlove; still, they are not evil. — M. Scott Peck

What is evil neither can nor should be loved; for it is not one's duty to be a lover of evil or to become like what is bad; and we have said that like is dear to like. Must the friendship, then, be forthwith broken off? Or is this not so in all cases, but only when one's friends are incurable in their wickedness? If they are capable of being reformed one should rather come to the assistance of their character or their property, inasmuch as this is better and more characteristic of friendship. But a man who breaks off such a friendship would seem to be doing nothing strange; for it was not to a man of this sort that he was a friend; when his friend changed, therefore, and he is unable to save him, he gives him up. — Aristotle.

By the way, leafing through my dictionary I am struck by the poverty of language when it comes to naming or describing badness. Evil, wickedness, mischief, these words imply an agency, the conscious or at least active doing of wrong. They do not signify the bad in its inert, neutral, self-sustaining state. Then there are the adjectives: dreadful, heinous, execrable, vile, and so on. They are not so much as descriptive as judgmental. They carry a weight of censure mingled with fear. Is this not a queer state of affairs? It makes me wonder. I ask myself if perhaps the thing itself - badness - does not exist at all, if these strangely vague and imprecise words are only a kind of ruse, a kind of elaborate cover for the fact that nothing is there. Or perhaps words are an attempt to make it be there? Or, again, perhaps there is something, but the words invented it. Such considerations make me feel dizzy, as if a hole had opened briefly in the world. — John Banville

I didn't sleep that night. I cried. I wasn't frightened for myself; I was indignant; it was the wickedness of it that broke me. The war came to an end and I went home. I'd always been keen on mechanics, and if there was nothing doing in aviation, I'd intended to get into an automobile factory. I'd been wounded and had to take it easy for a while. Then they wanted me to go to work. I couldn't do the sort of work they wanted me to do. It seemed futile. I'd had a lot of time to think. I kept on asking myself what life was for. After all it was only by luck that I was alive; I wanted to make something of my life, but I didn't know what. I'd never thought much about God. I began to think about Him now. I couldn't understand why there was evil in the world. I knew I was very ignorant; I didn't know anyone I could turn to and I wanted to learn, so I began to read at haphazard. — W. Somerset Maugham

We know, deep down inside, it's wrong! There's nothing you can say to ever make it right! Killing is killing, no matter how you slice it! And the ones doing all the killing should be locked up, and be forced to watch the world transform from, This evil place they've created, To the wonderful place we should be creating! — Ronald Richter

Pride is an evil dragon; it sleeps underneath your heart and then roars when you need silence. — Jodi Picoult

I sagged to my knees as the adrenaline wore off and my muscles started to shake, leaving me weak and nearly hyperventilating. I could handle goblins and bogeymen and evil, flesh-eating horses, but giant freaking spiders? That's where I drew the line. — Julie Kagawa

We know not what all this wide world means; its strange mixture of good and evil. But we have been placed here and bid live and hope. I know not what we are to hope; but there is some good beyond us that we must seek; and that is our earthly task. If — Mary Shelley

Thompson's message was straightforward: if God through divine revelation so clearly sanctioned slavery, and even the trade in "strangers," how could genuine Christians attack modern slavery, or even the slave trade, as an evil? — Mark A. Noll

Good will always prevail over evil. I see that in me versus Klitschko. — Tyson Fury

See the good in that which is evil, and the evil in that which is good. — Hayao Miyazaki

If the Soul sees, after death , what passes on this earth , and watches over the welfare of those it loves, then must its greatest happiness consist in seeing the current of its beneficent influences widening out from age to age, as rivulets widen into rivers, and aiding to shape the destinies of individuals, families, States, the World; and its bitterest punishment, in seeing its evil influences causing mischief and misery , and cursing and afflicting men, long after the frame it dwelt in has become dust, and when both name and memory are forgotten. — Albert Pike

If you choose not to fight against Asroth, then you have already chosen him. Doing nothing does not absolve you of choice. Doing nothing puts you firmly on Asroth's side and makes you a coward, as well, for not having the stones to admit it. — John Gwynne

She could understand being so in love it robbed you of your balance, your judgment of good and evil, but she could not make the leap to acting out the passion or the violence as Elissa had. There was nothing worth winning at the cost of your own being, the soul, the integrity that was the core of who you were. The act of doing such a thing made it impossible for you to hold the good, even if you could grasp it for an instant. — Anne Perry

We underestimate God and we overestimate evil. We don't see what God is doing and conclude that he is doing nothing. We see everything that evil is doing and think it is in control of everyone. — Eugene H. Peterson

Out of evil, much good has come to me. By keeping quiet, repressing nothing, remaining attentive, and by accepting reality - taking things as they are, and not as I wanted them to be - by doing all this, unusual knowledge has come to me, and unusual powers as well, such as I could never have imagined before.
I always thought that when we accepted things they overpowered us in some way or other. This turns out not to be true at all, and it is only by accepting them that one can assume and attitude towards them.
So now I intend to play the game of life, being receptive to whatever comes to me, good and bad, sun and shadow forever alternating, and, in this way, also accepting my own nature with its positive and negative sides. Thus everything becomes more alive to me.
What a fool I was! How I tried to force everything to go according to way I thought it ought to.
an ex patient of C. G. Jung (Alchemical Studies, pg 47) — C. G. Jung

The followers of Christ have been called to peace ... And they must not only have peace but make it. And to that end they renounce all violence and tumult. In the cause of Christ nothing is to be gained by such methods ... His disciples keep the peace by choosing to endure suffering themselves rather than inflict it on others. They maintain fellowship where others would break it off. They renounce hatred and wrong. In so doing they overcome evil with good, and establish the peace of God in the midst of a world of war and hate. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

You must not be too severe upon yourself," replied Elizabeth.
Say nothing of that. Who should suffer but myself? It has been my own doing, and I ought to feel it." You may well warn me against such an evil. Human nature is so prone to fall into it! No, Lizzy, let me once in my life feel how much I have been to blame. I am not afraid of being overpowered by the impression. It will pass away soon enough. — Jane Austen

From this moment on, nothing is what it seems. You're not a human being, you're a character- and filmmakers are doing everything in their power to kill you even now.
Supernatural powers and curses are real, and numbers like 666 and 237 can kill you just as easily as a butch knife.
Log cabins are slaughterhouses, cornstalks are antennas for evil, and aliens never, ever come in peace. — Seth Grahame-Smith

Every man should be responsible to others, nor should anyone be allowed to do just as he pleases; for where absolute freedom is allowed there is nothing to restrain the evil which is inherent in every man. But the principle of responsibility secures that which is the greatest good in states; the right persons rule and are prevented from doing wrong, and the people have their due. It is evident that this is the best kind of democracy, and why? because the people are drawn from a certain class. — Aristotle.

If we separate our mundane needs (doing) from God's best gift, his loving presence (being), then we are overspiritualizing prayer. If we ask nothing of God, we are left adrift in an evil world. Such a position may feel spiritual because it seems unselfish, but it is unbiblical because it separates the real world of our desires from God's world. The kingdom can't come because it is floating. By discounting the spiritual and physical worlds, Neoplatonism did exactly what the Enlightenment did. The only difference was Neoplatonism valued the spiritual while the Enlightenment valued the physical. So the church is influenced by Neoplatonism (the physical isn't important), and the world is shaped by the Enlightenment (the spiritual isn't important). Both perspectives stifled honest, person-to-person praying in the church. — Paul E. Miller

- You take evil for good. It's a passing crisis. It's the result of your illness, perhaps.
- You do despise me! It's simply that I don't want to do good, I want to do evil, and it has nothing to do with illness.
- Why do evil?
- So that everything will be destroyed. Oh, how nice it would be if everything were destroyed! You know, Alyosha, I sometimes think of doing a lot of harm. I would do it for a long while secretly and then suddenly everyone would find out. Everyone will stand around and point their fingers at me and I will look at them all. That would be awfully nice. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... Or he could choose life. At that pivotal moment, it occurred to him that with all his
schooling in theology he had, perhaps, missed the entire point of his studies, the very
crux of the gospel he had professed to believe. That the measure of a person's heart, the
barometer of good or evil, was nothing more than the extent of their willingness to
choose life over death. That the path of God was, simply, the path of life, abundant and
eternal. And this is where he failed, for to choose life is to choose sorrow as well as joy,
pain as well as pleasure. When Hunter had buried Rachel, he buried along with her his
heart, lest it might heal and feel and grow again. And in so doing he had chosen more
than death, he had chosen damnation itself, for damnation is nothing more than to stop
a thing in its eternal progression. In that first flight from West Chester he had run not
only from the horror and pain of death but from life itself.
— Richard Paul Evans

You get respect in society if you are aggressive. If you fight then people respect you. If you fight back, people like you for that as well. When Ive been beaten up, if Ive been in a pub doing nothing wrong, the fact I chose not to fight back, that I would never throw a punch back, people say Im weak. I dont think thats a weak thing at all. I think why should I descend to their level? If Ive done nothing wrong, throwing a punch back makes me as bad and corrupt as them. As evil as them, as stupid as them. — Richey Edwards

What are you doing all the time? And why do you say nothing? You are evil, you know, and sometimes when you smiled at me I hated you. I wanted to strike you. I wanted to make you bleed. You smiled at me the way you smiled at everyone, you told me what you told everyone - and you tell nothing but lies. What are you always hiding? And do you think I did not know when you made love to me, you were making love to no one? No one! Or everyone - but not me, certainly. I am nothing to you, nothing, and you bring me fever but no delight. — James Baldwin

Since every evil is found in sin, either as a consequence or as the sin itself, when we want to pray wholeheartedly to get rid of evil, we should say, think, or mean this little word - sin, nothing else. No other words are needed. On the other hand, if we pray intently to get anything good, we should cry out in word, thought, or longing nothing but this word - God, nothing else. No other words are needed; for God's very nature is goodness, and he's the source of everything good. Don't spend time wondering why I chose these two words over all of the others. I looked into it and found none better. If I had, or if God had taught me different ones, I would have chosen them over these, but I can think of no shorter words that so well represent everything good or everything evil. Follow my example. Don't analyze words at length because studying them isn't the same as doing the work of contemplative prayer. Only grace gives this gift. — Anonymous

If we read the scriptures, we shall escape the evils of sin. — Lailah Gifty Akita

The problem was you had to keep choosing between one evil or another, and no matter what you chose, they sliced a little bit more off you, until there was nothing left. At the age of 25 most people were finished. A whole god-damned nation of assholes driving automobiles, eating, having babies, doing everything in the worst way possible, like voting for the presidential candidates who reminded them most of themselves. I had no interests. I had no interest in anything. I had no idea how I was going to escape. At least the others had some taste for life. They seemed to understand something that I didn't understand. Maybe I was lacking. It was possible. I often felt inferior. I just wanted to get away from them. But there was no place to go. — Charles Bukowski

To me, this world is nothing but evil, and my own evil just happened to come out cause of the circumstances of what I was doing. — Aileen Wuornos

Many shooters ask the gamer to use violence against pure, unambiguous evil: monsters, Nazis, corporate goons, aliens of Ottoman territorial ambition. Yet these shooters typically have nothing to say about evil and violence, other than that evil is evil and violence is violent. This was never the most promising thematic carbon to trace, and yet shooters keep doing so with as little self-questioning as a medieval monk copying out scripture. — Tom Bissell

Only the people who are born of God can become victors and overcomers in this evil world — Sunday Adelaja

Sister Aziza told us about the Jews. She described them in such a way that I imagined them as physically monstrous: they had horns on their heads, and noses so large they stuck right out of their faces like great beaks. Devils and djinns literally flew out of their heads to mislead Muslims and spread evil. Everything that went wrong was the fault of the Jews. The Iraqi tyrant Saddam Hussein, who had attacked the Islamic Revolution in Iran, was a Jew. The Americans, who were giving money to Saddam, were controlled by the Jews. The Jews controlled the world, and that was why we had to be pure: to resist this evil influence. Islam was under attack, and we should step forward and fight the Jews, for only if all Jews were destroyed would peace come for Muslims. I — Ayaan Hirsi Ali

It's a pity Bilbo didn't kill Gollum when he had the chance.
Pity? It is pity that stayed Bilbo's hand. Many that live deserve death. Some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them, Frodo? Do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. Even the very wise cannot see all ends. My heart tells me Gollum has some part to play in this, for good or evil ... (not finished yet) — J.R.R. Tolkien

Who will you be when faced with the end?
The end of a kingdom,
The end of good men,
Will you run?
Will you hide?
Or will you hunt down evil with a venomous pride?

Rise to the ashes,
Rise to the winter sky,
Rise to the calling,
Make heard the battle cry.
Let it scream from the mountains
From the forest to the chapel,
Because death is a hungry mouth
And you are the apple.

So who will you be when faced with the end?
When the vultures are circling
And the shadows descend
Will you cower?
Or will you fight?
Is your heart made of glass?
Or a pure Snow White? — Lily Blake

The planting of a tree, especially one of the long-living hardwood trees, is a gift which you can make to posterity at almost no cost and with almost no trouble, and if the tree takes root it will far outlive the visible effect of any of your other actions, good or evil. — George Orwell

For a nation which has an almost evil reputation for bustle, bustle, bustle, and rush, rush, rush, we spend an enormous amount of time standing around in line in front of windows, just waiting. — Robert Benchley

Somewhere somebody must have some sense. Men must see that force begets force, hate begets hate, toughness begets toughness. And it is all a descending spiral, ultimately ending in destruction for all and everybody. Somebody must have sense enough and morality enough to cut off the chain of hate and the chain of evil in the universe. And you do that by love. — Martin Luther King Jr.

I say one evil empire down ... one to go. — Michael Moore

The evil you do to others you may expect in return. — Publilius Syrus

Any new technology, if it's used by evil people, bad things can happen. But that's more a question of the politics of the technology. — Geoffrey Hinton

Google's a strange place. When I met Eric Schmidt, he said, "If you are kind to everybody, then you will make good decisions because people will give you good information, and if you are truthful to everybody, they will be truthful to you." That's what's different about Google. They screw up and make mistakes, but they genuinely mean the good stuff about "don't be evil." — Larry Brilliant

No writer besides Shakespeare has created more memorable characters attached to vices and virtues. In even their least sympathetic characters, one senses a kind of helplessness to passion quivering between the poles of good and evil. — Roger Rosenblatt

Wasn't it evil to wish without moving- or to move without aim? — Ayn Rand

The knowledge of Evil brings you near to God. — Abhijit Tripathi

Only the virtuous can count on life, the pursuer of evil can only ever count on death. — Travis Berketa

The potential of greater good goes right along with the potential for greater evil. — Larry Wall

Our minds should not be empty because if they are not preoccupied by good, evil will break in upon them. — Samuel Johnson

When I sit down to write a novel, I am exploring my own relationship with God, with the struggle between good and evil, my own purpose. — Ted Dekker

Evil companions bring more hurt than profit. — Aesop

It is because good is always stronger than evil. Always remember that, Antonio. The smallest bit of good can stand against all the powers of evil in the world and it will emerge triumphant. — Rudolfo Anaya

Western ghosts are evil, but Korean ghosts are about making peace. That is part of our Korean psyche. — Min-sik Choi

Why the delay? Why does God let evil and pain so flagrantly exist, even thrive, on this planet? ... He holds back for our sakes. Re-creation involves us; we are, in fact, at the center of his plan ... the motive behind all human history, is to develop us, not God. Our very existence announces to the powers in the universe that restoration is under way. Every act of faith by every one of the people of God is like the tolling of a bell, and a faith like Job's reverberates throughout the universe. — Philip Yancey

Information technology alone cannot provide us an absolute shield against its evil twin disinformation technology. Our only protection is law, and that protection is available to us only if legitimate governments have the power to govern. — Paul Starr

Every time I hear someone making ignorant comments about the supposed 'evils' of homosexuality, I think about the true evil of the high suicide rates among gay and lesbian teens. — Susan Estrich

Evil would always come to me disguised in systems and dignified by law. — Pat Conroy

It was mossed and lichened with antiquity; and there was a hint of beginning dilapidation in the time-worn stone of the walls. The formal garden had gone a little wild from neglect; the trimmed hedges and trees had taken on fantastic sprawling shapes; and evil, poisonous weeds had invaded the flower-beds. There were statues of cracked marble and verdigris-eaten bronze amid the shrubbery; there were fountains that had long ceased to flow; and dials on which the foliage-intercepted sun no longer fell. — Clark Ashton Smith

All that is necessary for evil to succeed is that good men do nothing. — Edmund Burke

Nothing is so wretched or foolish as to anticipate misfortunes. What madness is it to be expecting evil before it comes. — Lucius Annaeus Seneca

In France, they call the beauty of youth 'the evil beauty.' You don't have it because of you but because you're born with it. The other kind of beauty is your own work, and it takes forever. — Monica Bellucci

Curtains always hide something, either the good or the bad! Their job is to hide! If you see a curtain covering up an evil, tear it down and throw it away! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

Even when we do not choose evil, we choose the good so half heartedly and with so many qualifications that mediocrity becomes our canonized statis quo. — Benedict Groeschel

Mr. Gabriel is clearly insane, evil and dangerous and insane (and let's not forget, you know, a demon). — Michelle Knudsen

In reality, everything is within; the outer is just a projection. Fear is within you; it is projected as a hell. Hell is just a projected image on the screen - of the fear that is within you, of the anger, of the jealousy, of all that is poisonous in you, of all that is evil in you. Heaven is, again, a projected image on the screen - of all that is good and beautiful, of all that is blissful within you. — Rajneesh

Anything that encourages pauperism, anything that relaxes the manly fiber and lowers self-respect, is an unmixed evil. — Theodore Roosevelt

THEY WANT EVIL? WE'LL SHOW THESE SUCKERS EVIL. AURADON PREP KIDS WILL GET WHAT'S COMING TO THEM. MALEFICENT'S DAUGHTER IS BACK. — Walt Disney Company