Wickedness Quotes - Page 8

• Those who submit to the Lord with simple heart will run the good race. If they keep their minds on a leash, they will not draw the wickedness of the demons onto themselves.

  John Climacus

  Life, Running, Peace

  Saint John (Climacus) (1982). “John Climacus (CWS)”, p.93, Paulist Press

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• The most horrible wickedness and cruelties, and the greatest miseries that have troubled the human race began with this thing called revelation, or revealed religion. ... It would be far, far better for us to let a thousand devils roam the world, and publicly preach the doctrine of devils (if there were such a thing, which there isn't), than to let one impostor and monster such a Moses, Joshua, Samuel or the Bible prophets come speaking the so-called word of God, and causing men to believe it.

  Thomas Paine

  Believe, Men, Race

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• The weak are not a noble breed. Their sublime deeds of faith, daring, and self-sacrifice usually spring from questionable motives. The weak hate not wickedness but weakness; and one instance of their hatred of weakness is hatred of self. All the passionate pursuits of the weak are in some degree a striving to escape, blur, or disguise an unwanted self. It is a striving shot through with malice, envy, self-deception, and a host of petty impulses; yet it often culminates in superb achievements.

  Eric Hoffer

  Hate, Spring, Sacrifice

  Eric Hoffer (1963). “The Ordeal of Change”

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• We are easily shocked by crimes which appear at once in their full magnitude, but the gradual growth of our own wickedness, endeared by interest, and palliated by all the artifices of self-deceit, gives us time to form distinctions in our own favor

  Samuel Johnson

  Self, Giving, Growth

  Samuel Johnson, Arthur Murphy, Francis Pearson Walesby (1825). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D..: The Rambler”, p.37

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• There are multitudes of pure and holy spirits waiting to take tabernacles, now what is our duty. To prepare tabernacles for them; to take a course that will not tend to drive those spirits into families of the wicked, where they will be trained in wickedness, debauchery, and every species of crime. It is the duty of every righteous man and woman to prepare tabernacles for all the spirits they can.
  This is the reason why the doctrine of plurality of wives was revealed, that the noble spirits which are waiting for tabernacles might be brought forth.

  Brigham Young

  Men, Righteous Man, Wife

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• The greatest historian should also be a great moralist. It is no proof of impartiality to treat wickedness and goodness on the same level.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  History, Levels, Goodness

  Theodore Roosevelt (2006). “History as Literature and Other Essays”, p.19, Cosimo, Inc.

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• Enter with me into the sufferings, not only of the people of India but of the whole world. Nonviolence is a more active and real fight against wickedness than retaliation whose very nature is to increase wickedness. It is not a weapon of the weak. It is a weapon of the strongest and bravest.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Real, Fighting, People

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• Any who pretend to assume to engage in plural marriage in this day, when the one holding the keys has withdrawn the power by which they are performed, are guilty of gross wickedness. Thy are living in adultery, have already sold their souls to Satan, and (whether their acts are based on ignorance or lust or both) they will be damned in eternity.

  Bruce R. McConkie

  Ignorance, Keys, Soul

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• [About Eichmann:] It was as though in those last minutes he was summing up the lesson that this long course in human wickedness had taught us - the lesson of the fearsome, word-and-thought-defying banality of evil.

  Hannah Arendt

  Taught Us, Long, Evil

  Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil ch. 15 (1963)

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• The majority is wicked.

  Bias of Priene

  Wicked, Majority

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• What has this unfeeling age of ours left untried, what wickedness has it shunned?

  Horace

  Evil, Age, Left

  "Carmina", I. 35. 34, as quoted in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations, p. 239-41, 1922.

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• If weakness may excuse, What murderer, what traitor, parricide, Incestuous, sacrilegious, but may plead it? All wickedness is weakness; that plea, therefore, With God or man will gain thee no remission.

  John Milton

  Men, Weakness, May

  John Milton, Edward Young, Thomas Gray, James Beattie, William Collins (1836). “The Poetical Works of Milton, Young, Gray, Beattie, and Collins”, p.125

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• I trust in due time to lay the perfidy, meanness, and wickedness of [Henry] Clay naked before the American people. I have lately got an intimation of some of his secret movements, which, if I can reach with positive and responsible proof, I will wield to his political, and perhaps his actual, destruction.

  Andrew Jackson

  People, Political, Secret

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• And I believe that I will never be able to hate any human being for his so-called 'wickedness,' that I shall only hate the evil that is within me, though hate is perhaps putting it too strongly even then. In any case, we cannot be lax enough in what we demand of others and strict enough in what we demand of ourselves.

  Etty Hillesum

  Hate, Believe, Evil

  Etty Hillesum, K. A. D. Smelik, Arnold Pomerans (2002). “Etty: The Letters and Diaries of Etty Hillesum, 1941-1943”, p.307, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

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• Let wickedness escape as it may at the bar, it never fails of doing justice upon itself; for every guilty person is his own hangman.

  Seneca the Younger

  Justice, Guilt, Bars

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• The unrighteous are never really fortunate.

  Euripides

  Fortunate

  Euripides (2013). “Euripides IV: Helen, The Phoenician Women, Orestes”, p.63, University of Chicago Press

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• In the commission of evil, fear no man so much as thyself; another is but one witness against thee, thou art a thousand; another thou mayest avoid, thyself thou canst not. Wickedness is its own punishment.

  Francis Quarles

  Art, Men, Evil

  Francis Quarles (1844). “Enchiridion Institutions, Essays and Maxims, political, moral & divine. Divided into four centuries. By Francis Quarles”, p.47

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• Few occasions are as joyous to small children as funerals, almost better than the big wedding blowouts that take place at night when it's hard to stay awake. A small boy will never be harshly criticized at a funeral; he is more treasured as death comes close and all his wickedness vanishes before the inescapable fact that thank God, he is healthy.

  Arthur Miller

  Children, Boys, Night

  Arthur Miller (2013). “Timebends: A Life”, p.29, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• The form of godliness may exist with secret and with open wickedness, but the power of godliness cannot.

  Phillips Brooks

  Secret, May, Form

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• But all the wickedness in the world which man may do or think is no more to the mercy of God than a live coal dropped in the sea.

  William Langland

  Men, Thinking, Mercy Of God

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• It is a man's own dishonesty, his crimes, his wickedness, and boldness, that takes away from him soundness of mind; these are the furies, these the flames and firebrands, of the wicked.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Men, Flames, Mind

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• Over all life broods Poesy, like the calm blue sky with its motherly, rebuking face. She is the great reformer, and where the love of her is strong and healthy, wickedness and wrong cannot long prevail.

  James Russell Lowell

  Strong, Blue, Sky

  James Russell Lowell (1845). “Conversations on Some of the Old Poets”, p.138

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• Indiscretion and wickedness, be it known, are first cousins.

  Ninon de L'Enclos

  Cousin, Firsts, Known

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• It is justly considered as the greatest excellency of art to imitate nature; but it is necessary to distinguish those parts of nature which are most proper for imitation: greater care is still required in representing life, which is so often discoloured by passion or deformed by wickedness. If the world be promiscuously described, I cannot see of what use it can be to read the account; or why it may not be as safe to turn the eye immediately upon mankind, as upon a mirror which shows all that presents itself without discrimination.

  Samuel Johnson

  Art, Eye, Passion

  Samuel Johnson (1968). “Essays from the Rambler, Adventurer, and Idler”, p.12, Yale University Press

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• God sees with utter clarity who we are. He is undeceived as to our warts and wickedness. But when God looks at us that is not all He sees. He also sees who we are intended to be, who we will one day become.

  John Ortberg

  One Day, Looks, Who We Are

  John Ortberg (2001). “Love Beyond Reason: Moving God's Love from Your Head to Your Heart”, p.24, Harper Collins

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