Quotes & Sayings About Malignancy

Science itself caused half the problems it was trying to solve. "Progress" was Mother Earth's ultimate malignancy. — Dan Brown

I actually think the civil service, who are the malignancy at the heart of public life, have consciously prevented, talked ministers out of, made it difficult regulatory-wise, to allow more pressure on alternative energy sources to grow. — Ken Livingstone

Antonio: Will you stay no longer? nor will you not that I go with you?
Sebastian: By your patience, no. My stars shine darkly over me; the malignancy of my fate might, perhaps, distemper yours; therefore I shall crave of you your leave that I may bear my evils alone. It were a bad recompense for your love to lay any of them on you. — William Shakespeare

Saigonese corruption was incapacitating, a malignancy that poisoned the entire system of government. Graft was the main preoccupation of those on the Saigon side, Vann learned, absorbing more time and thought than any other concern and summoning considerable ingenuity from people who were incompetent at the task they were supposed to perform. — Anonymous

One tiny Hobbit against all the evil the world could muster. A sane being would have given up, but Samwise burned with a magnificent madness, a glowing obsession to surmount every obstacle, to find Frodo, destroy the Ring, and cleanse Middle Earth of its festering malignancy. He knew he would try again. Fail, perhaps. And try once more. A thousand, thousand times if need be, but he would not give up the quest. — J.R.R. Tolkien

To "know thyself" must mean to know the malignancy of one's own instincts and to know, as well, one's power to deflect it. — Karl A. Menninger

As a kid I heard the word malignancy as "Malig-Nancy" like an evil woman's name, no matter how many times Kiwi and the Chief and Dr. Gautman himself corrected me. Our mother had mistaken her first symptoms for a pregnancy, and so I still pictured the Malig-Nancy as a baby, a tiny, eyeless fist of a sister, killing her. — Karen Russell

I knew I'd get over this. People broke up with each other every day and you didn't see them falling down and dying of unhappiness. But unhappiness didn't kill you that way. It was a slow malignancy that stole your hope. You didn't fall over dead, you faded away into nothingness. — Denise Grover Swank

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

Faith, then, is simply a believing that there is a God who loves us, in spite of the poison of sin coursing through our soul. It is a believing that he loves us even though, like the Israelites of old, we have nothing to bring to him but malignancy, wretched sickness, and grumbling misery. It is believing that he invites us to look to him, to rely upon him, and to trust in him simply to do what he has said. It is believing that if we turn the gaze of our soul upward toward him, he will give us life. The Lord Jesus characterizes the simplicity and certainty of saving faith, stating that it is his Father's will to grant eternal life to all who look on and believe in him. "For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day" (John 6:40). — Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

The most profound indication of social malignancy ... no sense of humor. None of the monoliths could take a joke. — Edward Albee

Fear was a thing I understood all too well. It was a malignancy that had spread throughout my body until my mother, in her godly wisdom, had diagnosed and cauterized it. — Delores Phillips

Utopianism's equality is intolerant of diversity, uniqueness, debate, etc., for utopianism's purpose requires a singular focus. There can be no competing voices or causes slowing or obstructing society's long and righteous march. Utopianism relies on deceit, propaganda, dependence, intimidation, and force. In its more aggressive state, as the malignancy of the enterprise becomes more painful and its impossibility more obvious, it incites violence inasmuch as avenues for free expression and civil dissent are cut off. Violence becomes the individual's primary recourse and the state's primary response. Ultimately, the only way out is the state's termination. — Mark R. Levin

It represented a monster of vaguely anthropoid outline, but with an octopus-like head whose face was a mass of feelers, a scaly, rubbery-looking body, prodigious claws on hind and fore feet, and long, narrow wings behind. This thing, which seemed instinct with a fearsome and unnatural malignancy, was of a somewhat bloated corpulence, and squatted evilly on a rectangular block or pedestal covered with undecipherable characters. The tips of the wings touched the back edge of the block, the seat occupied the centre, whilst the long, curved claws of the doubled-up, crouching hind legs gripped the front edge and extended a quarter of the way down toward the bottom of the pedestal. The cephalopod head was bent forward, so that the ends of the facial feelers brushed the backs of huge fore paws which clasped the croucher's elevated knees. — H.P. Lovecraft

While I knew him, he made me see--Poe did; made me understand that, unlike a bodily organ, the soul desires, even wills, its own continuance.It can be said to be the seat of will and desire and, even in its necrotic state, the root of evil. ... A Sunday school lesson or one of Cotton Mather's gaudy rants that helped to kindle the Salem bonfires is nearer to the truth of it than a fable by Poe, Hawthorne, or Melville. Evil's a malignancy beyond the skill and scalpel of {doctors} to heal or extirpate. — Norman Lock

The receding perspective of my past smothers my present. Remembering is the malignancy that feasts on my now. — Rabih Alameddine

Coleridge's description of Iago's actions as "motiveless malignancy" applies in some degree to all the Shakespearian villains. The adjective motiveless means, firstly, that the tangible gains, if any, are clearly not the principal motive, and, secondly, that the motive is not the desire for personal revenge upon another for a personal injury. Iago himself proffers two reasons for wishing to injure Othello and Cassio. He tells Roderigo that, in appointing Cassio to be his lieutenant, Othello has treated him unjustly, in which conversation he talks like the conventional Elizabethan malcontent. In his soliloquies with himself, he refers to his suspicion that both Othello and Cassio have made him a cuckold, and here he talks like the conventional jealous husband who desires revenge. But there are, I believe, insuperable objections to taking these reasons, as some critics have done, at their face value. — W. H. Auden

Hatred is the spiritual malignancy of our species, and like any other form of cancer, does its most terrible work not outwardly, but from within us. — Marianne Williamson

The malignancy of my fate might perhaps distemper yours. Therefore I shall crave of you your leave that I may bear my evils alone. It — William Shakespeare

He's blind, and nearly deaf in the bargain," Mrs. Martello said proudly. "And he's going in surgery just as soon as they get him all fixed up for it. He's got a malignancy. — Eudora Welty

Capitalism is a social cancer. It has always been a social cancer. It is the disease of society. It is the malignancy of society. — Murray Bookchin

He felt the tremble ... Why? But she was bigger, stronger, more intelligent than
himself, wasn't she? Did she, too, feel that intangible menace, that groping out of
darkness, that crouching malignancy down below? Was there, then, no strength in
growing up? No solace in being an adult? No sanctuary in life? No fleshly citadel strong
enough to withstand the scrabbling assault of midnights? Doubts flushed him. — Ray Bradbury

Beginning in 1940, ... questionable grades of (low) malignancy were classed as cancer ... the proportion of 'cancer' cures ... increased rapidly ... — Hardin B. Jones

Sin is a spiritual and moral malignancy. Left unchecked, it can spread throughout our entire inner being and contaminate every area of our lives. Even worse, it often will "metastasize" from us into the lives of other believers around us. — Jerry Bridges

Souls were the same. They, too, had useless baggage that impeded their proper performance, these annoying, holier-than-thou bits dangling like an appendix waiting for infection. Faith and hope and love ... prudence, temperance, justice, and fortitude ... all this useless clutter just packed too much damn morality into the heart, getting in the way of the soul's innate desire for malignancy. — J.R. Ward