I subscribe to a Page-A-Day calendar email, so every morning I wake up to a new quote or suggestion for living a happier, less stressful life. This morning’s gem was particularly resonant, so I figured I would share.
“Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.”
—Simone Weil
That got me thinking, of course, about other good quotes I’ve seen about the nature of evil. In lieu of yet another examination about evil, I decided instead to present them here without comment.
‘The real thing about evil,’ said the Witch at the doorway, ‘isn’t any of what you said. You figure out one side of it – the human side, say – and the eternal side goes into shadow. Or vice versa. It’s like the old saw: What does a dragon in its shell look like? Well no one can ever tell, for as soon as you break the shell to see, the dragon is no longer in its shell. The real disaster of this inquiry is that it is the nature of evil to be secret.’ (Gregory Maguire, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West)
“Evil is a point of view.” (Anne Rice, Interview With the Vampire)
“There is no reason why good cannot triumph as often as evil. The triumph of anything is a matter of organization. If there are such things as angels, I hope that they are organized along the lines of the Mafia.” (Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., The Sirens of Titan)
“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.” (Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil)
C'est que c'est 