No Good And Evil Quotes & Sayings

Yet living and dying, honour and dishonour, pain and pleasure, riches and poverty, and so forth are equally the lot of good men and bad. Things like these neither elevate nor degrade; and therefore they are no more good than they are evil. — Marcus Aurelius

There are plenty of good reason for fighting," I said, "but no good reason ever to hate without reservation, to imagine that God Almighty Himself hates with you, too. Where's evil? It's that large part of every man that wants to hate without limit, that wants to hate with God on its side. It's that part of every man that finds all kinds of ugliness so attractive. "It's that part of an imbecile," I said, "that punishes and vilifies and makes war. — Kurt Vonnegut

Zen is to religion what a Japanese "rock garden" is to a garden. Zen knows no god, no afterlife, no good and no evil, as the rock-garden knows no flowers, herbs or shrubs. It has no doctrine or holy writ: its teaching is transmitted mainly in the form of parables as ambiguous as the pebbles in the rock-garden which symbolise now a mountain, now a fleeting tiger. When a disciple asks "What is Zen?", the master's traditional answer is "Three pounds of flax" or "A decaying noodle" or "A toilet stick" or a whack on the pupil's head. — Arthur Koestler

Man has reason, discrimination and free-will such as it is. The brute has no such thing. It is not a free agent, and knows no distinction between virtue and vice, good and evil. Man, being a free agent, knows these distinctions, and when he follows his higher nature, shows himself far superior to the brute, but when he follows his baser nature can show himself lower than the brute. — Mahatma Gandhi

Religion doesn't just cloud our minds. It asks us to deliberately deceive ourselves
to replace reason with its opposite, faith. And when men operate on faith, they can no longer be reasoned with, which makes them more dangerous than any sane man, good or evil. — James L. Sutter

The general consent of all that sect is that God (by his foreknowledge, counsel, and wisdom) has no assured election, neither yet any certain reprobation, but that every man may elect or reprobate himself by his own free will, which he has (say they) to do good or evil ... [All these things are] forged by their own brains, and polished by the finest of their wits, when yet in very deed they are but the rotten heresies of ... Pelagius, long ago confuted by Augustine ... — John Knox

If we do wrong and no harm comes of it, we are not thereby justified. If we did evil and good came of it, the evil would be just as evil. It is not the result of the action, but the action itself which God weighs. — Charles Spurgeon

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. — Ursula K. Le Guin

Woe betide him, and her too, when it comes to things of consequence, when they are placed in circumstances requiring fortitude and strength of mind, if she have not resolution enough to resist idle interference ... It is the worst evil of too yielding and indecisive a character, that no influence over it can be depended on. You are never sure of a good impression being durable; everybody may sway it. Let those who would be happy be firm. — Jane Austen

No one can take less pains than to hold his tongue. Hear much, and speak little; for the tongue is the instrument of the greatest good and greatest evil that is done in the world. — Walter Raleigh

The tavern haunter wanders lonely in a desert
And sees the whole world as a mirage.
The desert is limitless and endless --
No one has seen its beginning or its end,
And even if you wandered in it a hundred years
You would not find yourself, or anyone else.
Those who live there have no feet or heads,
Are neither "believers" nor "unbelievers."
Drunk on the wine of selflessness,
They have given up good and evil alike.
Drunk, without lips or mouth, on Truth
They have thrown away all thoughts of name and fame,
All talk of wonders, visions, spiritual states,
Dreams, secret rooms, lights, miracles. — Mahmud Shabistari

He examined the chess problem and set out the pieces. It was a tricky ending, involving a couple of knights.
'White to play and mate in two moves.'
Winston looked up at the portrait of Big Brother. White always mates, he thought with a sort of cloudy mysticism. Always, without exception, it is so arranged. In no chess problem since the beginning of the world has black ever won. Did it not symbolize the eternal, unvarying triumph of Good over Evil? The huge face gazed back at him, full of calm power. White always mates. — George Orwell

He never spoke with any bitterness at all, no matter how awful the things he said. Are there really people without resentment, without hate, she wondered. People who never go cross-grained to the universe? Who recognize evil, and resist evil, and yet are utterly unaffected by it? Of course there are. Countless, the living and the dead. Those who have returned in pure compassion to the wheel, those who follow the way that cannot be followed without knowing they follow it, the sharecropper's wife in Alabama and the lama in Tibet and the entomologist in Peru and the millworker in Odessa and the greengrocer in London and the goatherd in Nigeria and the old, old man sharpening a stick by a dry streambed somewhere in Australia, and all the others. There is not one of us who has not known them. There are enough of them, enough to keep us going. Perhaps. — Ursula K. Le Guin

There was a solemn article in the local paper seriously advocating systematic exterminating of the entire German nation as the only proper course after military victory: because, if you please, they are rattlesnakes, and don't know the difference between good and evil! (What of the writer?) The Germans have just as much right to declare the Poles and Jews exterminable vermin, subhuman, as we have to select the Germans: in other words, no right, whatever they have done. — J.R.R. Tolkien

The deceitfulness of the heart of man appears in no one thing so much as this of spiritual pride and self-righteousness. The subtlety of Satan appears in its height, in his managing persons with respect to this sin. And perhaps one reason may be that here he has most experience; he knows the way of its coming in; he is acquainted with the secret springs of it: it was his own sin. Experience gives vast advantage in leading souls, either in good or evil. — Jonathan Edwards

The forces of blind life that work across this hilltop are as irresistible as she said they were, they work by a principle more potent than fission. But I can't look upon them as just life, impartial and eternal and in flux, an unceasing interchange of protein. And I can't find proofs of the crawl toward perfection that she believed in. Maybe what we call evil is only as she told me that first day we met, what conflicts with our interests; but maybe there are such realities as ignorance, selfishness, jealousy, malice, criminal carelessness, and maybe these things are evil no mater whose interests they serve or conflict with. — Wallace Stegner

We're taking action against evil people. Because this great nation of many religions understands, our war is not against Islam, or against faith practiced by the Muslim people. Our war is a war against evil. This is clearly a case of good versus evil, and make no mistake about it - good will prevail. — George W. Bush

A girl locked in a tower with no life experience. But, you know, Rebecca ... this isn't a fairy tale. Your tower will never protect you from the darkness outside."
"And your tower will always be a prison," I said softly. — Gina Marinello-Sweeney

In politics, they have ran with the hare and hunted with the hound. In criticism, they have, knowingly and unblushingly, given false characters, both for good and for evil; sticking at no art of misrepresentation, to clear out of the field of literature all who stood in the way of the interests of their own clique. They have never allowed their own profound ignorance of anything (Greek for instance) to throw even an air of hesitation into their oracular decision on the matter. They set an example of profligate contempt for truth, of which the success was in proportion to the effrontery; and when their prosperity had filled the market with competitors, they cried out against their own reflected sin, as if they had never committed it, or were entitled to a monopoly of it. The latter, I rather think, was what they wanted. Mr. — Thomas Love Peacock

There is no good and evil, there is only power and those too weak to seek it. — J.K. Rowling

Given - and this is the fundamental thing - that God's mercy has no limits, if He is approached with a sincere and repentant heart, the question for those who do not believe in God is to abide by their own conscience. There is sin, also for those who have no faith, in going against one's conscience. Listening to it and abiding by it means making up one's mind about what is good and evil. — Pope Francis

With no power to annul the elemental evil in him, though readily enough he could hide it; apprehending the good, but powerless to be it; a nature like Claggart's, surcharged with energy as such natures almost invariably are, what recourse is left to it but to recoil upon itself and, like the scorpion for which the Creator alone is responsible, act out to the end the part allotted it. — Herman Melville

If the whole responsibility is thrown upon our own shoulders, we shall be at our highest and best; when we have nobody to grope towards, no devil to lay our blame upon, no Personal God to carry our burdens, when we are alone responsible, then we shall rise to our highest and best. I am responsible for my fate, I am the bringer of good unto myself, I am the bringer of evil. — Swami Vivekananda

I didn't like what that word-'childhood'-conjured up, or rather, I didn't like the way most people use it: that presumption of innocence and starry-eyed wonder. The only good thing about childhood is that no one really remembers it, or rather, that's the only thing about it to like: this forgetting. What else could possibly lie beneath that blissful oblivion but shame: a dark knowledge of that terrible badge of weakness, that inescapable servitude (bearable only thanks to the slow revelation that we could inflict cruelty and evil on the weaker kids), a sickening awareness that just about everything there is to understand was beyond us, made even worse by the lies and inaccuracies that adults feel entitled to spread around, deliberately, or because they don't know any better, about themselves or about the nature of reality? — Jean-Christophe Valtat

[ ... ] the war between good and evil existed no longer, for the thing beneath the Graal was not fighting but vomiting. — Charles Williams

I can't. What's more, I lose the will to want to as each day passes. I am neither good nor noble. The tragedy is I no longer care. You're wise to deny me your gift, Emrys. If I had your power, I would be a servant to madness first. And a man cannot serve two masters and come out unscathed. I may curse you in my pain, but you save me from a greater evil. — Torie N. James

We always think we are right, and - search as I have - there is no evil under the sun that somebody somewhere won't argue is actually a good, no idiocy that hasn't got its perfectly serious defenders, and no tyrant, past or present - no matter how bloody - without some bunch of zealot schmucks to defend him or his reputation till the last breath in their bodies - or preferably somebody else's. — Clive Barker

The choice before human beings, is not, as a rule , between good and evil but between two evils. You can let the Nazis rule the world : that is evil; or you can overthrow them by war , which is also evil. There is no other choice before you, and whichever you choose you will not come out with clean hands. — George Orwell

The physical world is morally neutral and may be known relatively well by an objective observer; but the invisible spiritual realm comprises beings both good and evil, and the "objective" observer has no means of distinguishing one from the other unless he accepts the revelation which the invisible God has made of them to man. — Seraphim Rose

Both good and evil, when they are full grown, become retrospective ... That is what mortals misunderstand. They say of some temporary suffering, 'No future bliss can make up for it,' not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory. And of some sinful pleasure they say 'Let me but have this and I'll take the consequences': little dreaming how damnation will spread back and back into their past and contaminate the pleasure of the sin. — C.S. Lewis

We have people like that in our world, too. People who say that freedom is no longer practical, that we must surrender it for a greater common good." "Fear them," she whispered. "They are the heart of evil. They tolerate tyranny, excuse it, compromise with it. In so doing they always bring savagery and death upon the rest of us. — Terry Goodkind

Here was a revelation which no one could doubt or deny; here, seen by unknown magic of Overlord science, were the true beginnings of all the world's great faiths. Most of them were noble and inspiring, but that was not enough. Within a few days, all mankind's multitudinous messaihs had lost their divinity. Beneath the fierce and passionless light of truth, faiths that had sustained millions for twice a thousand years vanished like morning dew. All the good and all the evil they had wrought were swept suddenly into the past, and could touch the minds of men no more. — Arthur C. Clarke

There are two apparently opposing forces that govern our lives. No, not good and evil. Love and fear.
That's right: the opposite of love is not hate, but fear — John C. Parkin

It is good for us to have trials and troubles at times, for they often remind us that we are on probation and ought not to hope in any worldly thing. It is good for us sometimes to suffer contradiction, to be misjudged by men even though we do well and mean well. These things help us to be humble and shield us from vainglory. When to all outward appearances men give us no credit, when they do not think well of us, then we are more inclined to seek God Who sees our hearts. Therefore, a man ought to root himself so firmly in God that he will not need the consolations of men. — Thomas A Kempis

Here the four elements of solidity, fluidity, heat and motion have no place; the notions of length and breadth, the subtle and the gross, good and evil, name and form are altogether destroyed; neither this world nor the other, nor coming, going or standing, neither death nor birth, nor sense-objects are to be found. — Walpola Rahula

If untimely death came only those who deserved that fate, Keturah, where would choice be? No one would do good for its own sake, but only to avoid an early demise. No one would speak out against evil because of his own courageous soul, but only to live another day. The right to choose is man's great gift, but one thing is not his to choose
the time and means of death. — Martine Leavitt

The fact is that we have no way of knowing if the person who we think we are is at the core of our being. Are you a decent girl with the potential to someday become an evil monster, or are you an evil monster that thinks it's a decent girl?"
"Wouldn't I know which one I was?"
"Good God, no. The lies we tell other people are nothing to the lies we tell ourselves. — Derek Landy

Faeries are fallen angels," said Dorothea, "cast down out of heaven for their pride."
"That's the legend," Jace said. "It's also said that they're the offspring of demons and angels, which always seemed more likely to me. Good and evil, mixing together. Faeries are as beautiful as angels are supposed to be, but they have a lot of mischief and cruelty in them. And you'll notice most of them avoid midday sunlight - "
"For the devil has no power," said Dorothea softly, as if she were reciting an old rhyme, "except in the dark. — Cassandra Clare

You can choose who you want to be the hero [in Hard Candy], but youll be second-guessing yourself
theres just no right answer. Our society is obsessed with finding good and finding evil, but I think were all capable of anything. — Ellen Page

In books there's always somebody standing by ready to say hey, the world's in danger, evil's on the rise, but if you're really quick and take this ring and put it in that volcano over there everything will be fine.
But in real life that guy never turns up. He's never there. He's busy handing out advice in the next universe over. In our world no one ever knows what to do, and everyone's just as clueless and full of crap as everyone else, and you have to figure it all out by yourself. And even after you've figured it out and done it, you'll never know whether you were right or wrong. You'll never know if you put the ring in the right volcano, or if things might have gone better if you hadn't. There's no answers in the back of the book. — Lev Grossman

When the ghost comes round at midnight Well you both can have some fun He can drive you mad, he can make you sad He can keep you from the sun When they take him down, he'll be both safe and sound And the hand does fit the glove And no matter what they tell you, There's good and evil in everyone. — Van Morrison

He no longer clung to the simplistic ideals of right and wrong or good and evil. He understood better than anyone that dark and light were intertwined in strange and complex ways. — Drew Karpyshyn

The moral is the chosen, not the forced; the understood, not the obeyed. The moral is the rational, and reason accepts no commandments. — Ayn Rand

Zarathustra saw many lands and many peoples: thus he discovered the good and evil of many peoples. No greater power did Zarathustra find on earth than good and evil. — Friedrich Nietzsche

But for a younger generation of conservative operatives who would soon rise to power ... They were true believers who meant what they said, whether it was 'No New Taxes' or 'We are a Christian Nation.' In fact, with their rigid doctrines, slash-and-burn style, and exaggerated sense of having been aggrieved, this new conservative leadership was eerily reminiscent of some of the New Left's leaders during the sixties. As with their left-wing counterparts, this new vanguard of the right viewed politics as a contest not just between competing policy visions, but between good and evil. Activists in both parties began developing litmus tests, checklists of orthodoxy, leaving a Democrat who questioned abortion increasingly lonely, any Republican who championed gun control effectively marooned. In this Manichean struggle, compromise came to look like weakness, to be punished or purged. You were with us or you were against us. You had to choose sides. — Barack Obama

The Bible says no one has ever looked upon God and lived. God is perfectly good, and can't be in the presence of evil, even the smallest evil. Without his Son's sacrifice as a covering, we can't be in the presence of God without being destroyed, because his anger would be kindled against us. — John Michael Hileman

You don't understand me. You are not expected to. You are not capable. I am beyond your experience. I am beyond good and evil. I will be avenged. Lucifer dwells in all of us ... I don't believe in the hypocritical, moralistic dogma of this so-called civilized society ... You maggots make me sick! Hypocrites one and all ... I don't need to hear all of society's rationalizations. I've heard them all before ... legions of the night, night breed, repeat not the errors of the night prowler and show no mercy. — Richard Ramirez

The Dopey Science Creed: 1. I maintain that my life has no purpose and no meaning. The same is true for the entire universe. There is no purpose to anything. 2. I affirm that my morals come from my genes and my conditioning, not from decisions I make. Free will is an illusion. My personal identity is an illusion. 3. There are no "good" deeds, or "good people." There is no "bad," "evil," or "wrong" either. 4. Every report of encounters with spirits, angels, ghosts, and supernatural beings is bunk. The credibility or number of witnesses doesn't matter - it's all bunk. 5. I am my physical brain and nothing more. The death of my body is the death of me. — Alex Tsakiris

I am beyond your experience. I am beyond good and evil, legions of the night - night breed - repeat not the errors of the Night Stalker and show no mercy. — Richard Ramirez

Sin is our condition," I said.
"Say rather that love is our rightful condition."
"You talk like
you are a good man! But how can you be good without God?"
He grinned. "Not so good, neither. But what virtue I do have is in me and of me. Men deny the good that comes from themselves, calling it God. So they do with their own evil, calling it the Devil."
I tried to see how this might be.
"There is no Hell, Jacob."
"And the Bible?"
"Was written by men like ourselves."
He was frightening. At the idea of there being no Hell I had felt a breath of something like freedom, but it was illusion. I marvelled at his foolhardiness, feared it, and loved it. — Maria McCann

He told them therefore that He was not a Teacher asking for a disciple who would parrot His sayings; He was a Saviour Who first disturbed a conscience and then purified it. But many would never get beyond hating the disturber. The Light is no boon, except to those who are men of good will; their lives may be evil, but at least they want to be good. His Presence, He said, was a threat to sensuality, avarice, and lust. When a man has lived in a dark cave for years, his eyes cannot stand the light of the sun; so the man who refuses to repent turns against mercy. No one can prevent the sun from shining, but every man can pull down the blinds and shut it out. — Fulton J. Sheen

Accustom yourself to submit on all and every occasion, and on the most minute, no less than on the most important circumstances of life, to a small present evil, to obtain a greater distant good. This will give decision, tone, and energy to the mind, which, thus disciplined, will often reap victory from defeat and honor from repulse. — Charles Caleb Colton

Every 'no' is a 'yes' to something. — Eric Micha'el Leventhal

And then, just when everything is bearing down on us to such an extent that we can scarcely withstand it, the Christmas message comes to tell us that all our ideas are wrong, and that what we take to be evil and dark is really good and light because it comes from God. Our eyes are at fault, that is all. God is in the manger, wealth in poverty, light in darkness, succor in abandonment. No evil can befall us; whatever men may do to us, they cannot but serve the God who is secretly revealed as love and rules the world and our lives. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

When things are good, it is because we remember a time when they were not. When there was pain. But now the pain is gone, so things are 'good'. When we hurt, it is because we recall a time when we did not. When there was no pain. But now we suffer, so things are 'bad'. The tiger sipped from the cup, peering at the boy over the rim. Stars swirled in its eyes. "Good. Bad. The cup holds both. — Brooke Burgess

Classical tragedy was the war between good and evil. We wanted evil to be defeated and good to be victorious. But the battle in modern tragedy is between good and good. And no matter which side wins, we'll still be heartbroken. — Asghar Farhadi

If I've learned one thing, it's that the unfortunate thing about life is that everything's mixed. There's no absolute good and there's no absolute evil. There's just a lot of confusion. — Paul Russell

No power, no event, no circumstance, can compel a man to evil and unhappiness. He himself is his own compeller. He thinks and acts by his own volition. No being, however wise and great
not even the Supreme
can make him good and happy. He himself must choose the good, and thereby find the happy. — James Allen

She had thought once that there were good people and bad people, that there was a side of light and a side of darkness, but she no longer thought that. She had seen evil, in her brother and her father, the evil of good intentions gone wrong and the evil of sheer desire for power. But in goodness there was also no safety: Virtue could cut like a knife, and the fire of Heaven was blinding. — Cassandra Clare

When one acts on pity against justice, it is the good whom one punishes for the sake of the evil; when one saves the guilty from suffering, it is the innocent whom one forces to suffer. There is no escape from justice, nothing can be unearned and unpaid for in the universe, neither in matter nor in spirit - and if the guilty do not pay, then the innocent have to pay it. — Ayn Rand

He has spoken blasphemy." This was a wrong charge to bring - for Pilate, having his superstition again aroused - is even more afraid to put him to death. And he comes out again, and says, "I find no fault in Him." What a strong contest between good and evil in that man's heart! But they cried out again, "If you let this man go you are not Caesar's friend." They hit the mark this time, and he yields to their clamor. He brings forth a basin of water, and he washes his hands before them all, and he says, "I am innocent of the blood of this just Person. You see to it." A poor way of escaping! That water could not wash the blood from his hands, though their cry did bring the blood on their heads - "His blood be on us, and on our children. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Simon whispered to me, "But is everything okay?"
"No," Tori said. "I kidnapped her and forced her to escape with me. I've been using her as a human shield against those guys with guns, and I was just about to strangle her and leave her body here to throw them off my trail. But then you showed up and foiled my evil plans. Lucky for you, though. You get to rescue poor little Chloe again and win her undying gratitude."
"Undying gratitude?" Simon looked at me. "Cool. Does that come with eternal servitude? If so, I like my eggs sunnyside up."
I smiled. "I'll remember that."
--
"All right, then. Emergency medical situation, take two."
He leaped to his feet, staggered, keeled over, then lifted his head weakly.
"Chloe? Is that you?" He coughed. "Do you have my insulin?"
I placed it in his outstretched hand.
"You saved my life," he said. "How can I ever repay you?"
"Undying servitude sounds good. I like my eggs scrambled. — Kelley Armstrong

That was the funny thing. What happened to John would pass for his classmates, but for John it was a long challenging road ahead of him. Who knew where he would be sent, maybe a juvenile detention center? He might keep in touch with a few friends if his parents let him, but he would never return to Wakefield High. His peers had no clue the journey ahead of him, that his life was changed forever.
And they had no idea what lay ahead for Lilly. No one knew she had been given a task by the Archangels to fight a war against pure evil. They had no idea that Lilly would spend most of her free time not training for a marathon, but training to kill demons. John and Lilly were not all too different. — Ellie Elisabeth

The truth is that there are no good men, or bad men,' he said. 'It is the deeds that have goodness or badness in them. There are good deeds, and bad deeds. Men are just men - it is what they do, or refuse to do, that links them to good and evil. The truth is that an instant of real love, in the heart of anyone - the noblest man alive or the most wicked - has the whole purpose and process and meaning of life within the lotus-folds of its passion. The truth is that we are all, every one of us, every atom, every galaxy, and every particle of matter in the universe, moving toward God. — Gregory David Roberts

There are no heroes and there are no villains. There are just opposing points of view. That's all history is...the viciously long battle between world views. — Peter J. Tomasi

No one could see her out here, no one could judge her. She looked at herself in the mirror and saw the animal that she was trapped inside, that grew and fed and wanted. She wished above all else to look ordinary so that people's eyes just slid over her. Because Mum was wrong. It wasn't about believing this or that, it wasn't about good and evil and right and wrong, it was about finding the strength to bear the discomfort that came with being in the world. Clouds scrolled high up. She couldn't get Melissa out of her head. Something magnetic about her, the possibility of a softness inside, the challenge of peeling back those layers. — Mark Haddon

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

And for adults, the world of fantasy books returns to us the great words of power which, in order to be tamed, we have excised from our adult vocabularies. These words are the pornography of innocence, words which adults no longer use with other adults, and so we laugh at them and consign them to the nursery, fear masking as cynicism. These are the words that were forged in the earth, air, fire, and water of human existence, and the words are:
Love. Hate. Good. Evil. Courage. Honor. Truth. — Jane Yolen

Old me? There is no way to know. All I can do is decide if i trust Marcus or not. And while he has done cruel, evil things, our society is not divided into "good" and "bad". Cruelty does not make a person dishonest, the same way bravery does not make a person kind. Marcus is not good or bad, but both. Well, he is probably more bad than good ... — Veronica Roth

I am not tormented, Fern responded. I am ... diminished. I have always believed that your soul grows when you do something that is good and brave, a right thing, a true thing, and when you do evil- no matter what the motive- your soul is eroded. Well, my soul is less. — Jan Siegel

An eye for an eye, I say. If someone hits you you hit back, do you not? Why then should not the State, very severely hit by you brutal hooligans, not hit back also? But the new view is to say no. The new view is that we turn the bad into the good. All of which seems to me grossly unjust. — Anthony Burgess

Without the Christian explanation of original sin, the seemingly silly story of Adam and Eve and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, there was no explanation of conflict. At all. — Donald Miller

I look out again at the sun-my first full gaze. It is blood-red and men are walking about on rooftops. Everything above the horizon is clear to me. It is like Easter Sunday. Death is behind me and birth too. I am going to live now among the life maladies. I am going to live the spiritual life of the pygmy, the secret life of the little man in the wilderness of the bush. Inner and outer have changed places. Equilibrium is no longer the goal-the scales must be destroyed. Let me hear you promise again all those sunny things you carry inside you. Let me try to believe for one day, while I rest in the open, that the sun brings good tidings. Let me rot in splendor while the sun bursts in your womb. I believe all your lies implicitly. I take you as the personification of evil, as the destroyer of the soul, as the maharanee of the night. Tack your womb up on my wall, so that I may remember you. We must get going. Tomorrow, tomorrow ... — Henry Miller

Rationally considered, nothing can be more absurd than the baptism of infants under any circumstances. No statement, no matter by whom it may be said to have been uttered, can make that true which is radically false. If an innocent child, unconscious of good or evil, irresponsible to God and man, incapable of thought or action, is not already, in accordance with Christian theology, a member of Christ, then no vicarious promise or priestly ablution can make him one. For if this were so, a similar ceremony under devil worship could make him a member of Satan. — Tennessee Celeste Claflin

There is no objective and universally acceptable definition of good and evil. And until we have one, we will go on justifying our own actions, while condemning the actions of the others. — Gregory David Roberts

They are THE OPPORTUNISTS, those souls who in life were neither for good nor evil but only for themselves. Mixed with them are those outcasts who took no sides in the Rebellion of the Angels. They are neither in Hell nor out of it. Eternally unclassified, they race round and round pursuing a wavering banner that runs forever before them through the dirty air; and as they run they are pursued by swarms of wasps and hornets, who sting them and produce a constant flow of blood and putrid matter which trickles down the bodies of the sinners and is feasted upon by loathsome worms and maggots who coat the ground. — Dante Alighieri

The one prudence in life is concentration; the one evil is dissipation: and it makes no difference whether our dissipations are coarse or fine; property and its cares, friends and a social habit, or politics, or music, or feasting. Everything is good which takes away one plaything and delusion more, and drives us home to add one stroke of faithful work. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Accustom yourself to the belief that death is of no concern to us, since all good and evil lie in sensation and sensation ends with death. Therefore the true belief that death is nothing to us makes a mortal life happy, not by adding to it an infinite time, but by taking away the desire for immortality. For there is no reason why the man who is thoroughly assured that there is nothing to fear in death should find anything to fear in life. So, too, he is foolish who says that he fears death, not because it will be painful when it comes, but because the anticipation of it is painful; for that which is no burden when it is present gives pain to no purpose when it is anticipated. Death, the most dreaded of evils, is therefore of no concern to us; for while we exist death is not present, and when death is present we no longer exist. It is therefore nothing either to the living or to the dead since it is not present to the living, and the dead no longer are. — Epicurus

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

Man has always been dexterous at confusing evil with good. That was Adam's and Eve's problem, and it is our problem today. If evil were not made to appear attractive, there would be no such thing as temptation. — Billy Graham

This is a moral universe, which means that despite all the evidence that seems to be to the contrary, there is no way that evil and injustice and oppression and lies can have the last word ... that is what has upheld the morale of our people, to know that in the end good will prevail. — Desmond Tutu

In fact, the libertarian would reason that the fact that human nature is a mixture of both good and evil provides its own particular argument in his favor. For if man is such a mixture, then the best societal framework is surely one in which evil is discouraged and the good encouraged. The libertarian maintains that the existence of the State apparatus provides a ready, swift channel for the exercise of evil, since the rulers of the State are thereby legitimated and can wield compulsion in ways that no one else is permitted to do. — Murray Rothbard

It was a shame that Allah, Jehovah, God - it didn't matter what name you gave him - did not live in the world today, because if he did, we would still be in paradise, while he would be mired in appeals, requests, demands, injunctions, preliminary verdicts, and would have to justify to innumerable tribunals his decision to expel Adam and Eve from paradise for breaking an arbitrary rule with no foundation in law: Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat. — Paulo Coelho

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

Human lives are not equal in their worth. The proof? People are sad when a good person dies, and happy when an evil person dies. And for me, a human's life has no worth. I am not, and neither do I plan to become, a saint who preaches about the value of human lives. Still... You have killed too many people. — Kafka Asagiri

how much Jesus had broken away from the historically conditioned attitudes of his time, for the prevailing idea at that time was that good health and good fortune were a sign of God's favor to the deserving. This is how they got around the problem of evil, for it meant that the poor and suffering were only having divinely ordained punishment for their sin. No doubt this justified in the minds of the people of his day a great deal of social abuse, even as today some people of wealth and means look upon their material gains as their "just due." Jesus — John A. Sanford

The world is a den of thieves, and night is falling. Evil breaks its chains and runs through the world like a mad dog. The poison affects us all. No one escapes. Therefore let us be happy while we are happy. Let us be kind, generous, affectionate and good. It is necessary and not at all shameful to take pleasure in the little world. — Ingmar Bergman

You do believe it,' he said. 'You do believe everything. We all believe everything, even when we deny everything. The denyers believe. The unbelievers believe. Don't you feel in your heart that these contradictions do not really contradict: that there is a cosmos that contains them all? The soul goes round upon a wheel of stars and all things return; perhaps Strake and I have striven in many shapes, beast against beast and bird against bird, and perhaps we shall strive for ever. But since we seek and need each other, even that eternal hatred is an eternal love. Good and evil go round in a wheel that is one thing and not many. Do you not realize in your heart, do you not believe behind all your beliefs, that there is but one reality and we are its shadows; and that all things are but aspects of one thing: a centre where men melt into Man and Man into God?'
'No,' said Father Brown. — G.K. Chesterton

The first sign of love is when love asks nothing, [when it] gives everything. This is the real spiritual worship, the worship through love. Whether God is merciful is no longer questioned. He is God; He is my love. Whether God is omnipotent and almighty, limited or unlimited, is no longer questioned. If He distributes good, all right; if He brings evil, what does it matter? All other attributes vanish except that one-infinite love. — Swami Vivekananda

For what prevents us from saying that the happy life is to have a mind that is free, lofty, fearless and steadfast - a mind that is placed beyond the reach of fear, beyond the reach of desire, that counts virtue the only good, baseness the only evil, and all else but a worthless mass of things, which come and go without increasing or diminishing the highest good, and neither subtract any part from the happy life nor add any part to it?
A man thus grounded must, whether he wills or not, necessarily be attended by constant cheerfulness and a joy that is deep and issues from deep within, since he finds delight in his own resources, and desires no joys greater than his inner joys. — Seneca.

It was the verdict of ancient writers that men afflict themselves in evil and weary themselves in the good, and that the same effects result from both of these passions. For whenever men are not obliged to fight from necessity, they fight from ambition; which is so powerful in human breasts, that it never leaves them no matter to what rank they rise. The reason is that nature has so created men that they are able to desire everything but are not able to attain everything: so that the desire being always greater than the acquisition, there results discontent with the possession and little satisfaction to themselves from it. From this arises the changes in their fortunes; for as men desire, some to have more, some in fear of losing their acquisition, there ensues enmity and war, from which results the ruin of that province and the elevation of another. — Niccolo Machiavelli

With his mind free from the inflow of thoughts and from restlessness, by abandoning both good and evil, an alert man knows no fear. — Gautama Buddha

More rooted in logic was the silence of God. In the world there was evil and much of it resulted from doubt, from an honest confusion among men of good will. Would a reasonable God refuse to end it? Not finally reveal Himself? Not speak? "Lord, give us a sign ... " The raising of Lazarus was dim in the distant past. No one now living had heard his laughter. And so why not a sign? — William Peter Blatty

The Gods being good and making all things, there is no positive evil, it only comes by absence of good; just as darkness itself does not exist, but only comes about by absence of light. — Sallust

And, as with all retold tales that are in people's hearts, there are only good and bad things and black and white things and good and evil things and no in between anywhere. — John Steinbeck

Guard your tongue, and use it for good instead of evil. How many marriages or friendships have been destroyed because of criticism that spiraled out of control? How many relationships have broken down because of a word spoken thoughtlessly or in anger? A harsh word can't be taken back; no apology can fully repair its damage. — Billy Graham

For the person who is grounded in the timeless truth of the universe, there is no life and no death. He or she can experience eternal joy without being limited by the definitions of good and evil. The essence of Oneness always exists within us. — Ilchi Lee

How can you hope to recognize good and evil for what they truly are if you have no belief in a moral authority greater than yourself? — Ted Dekker

The devil has not vanished simply because people refuse to believe he exists, no more than God has ... — E.A. Bucchianeri

This is the Book (the Qur'aan), whereof there is no doubt, a guidance to those who are Al-Muttaqoon [the pious and righteous persons who fear Allaah much (abstain from all kinds of sins and evil deeds which He has forbidden) and love Allaah much (perform all kinds of good deeds which He has ordained)]. — Anonymous