Roaming in thought over the Universe, I saw the little that is
Good steadily hastening towards immortality,
And the vast all that is called Evil I saw hastening to merge itself and become lost and dead.
In four ways ... should one who flatters be understood as a foe in the guise of a friend: He approves of his friend's evil deeds, he disapproves his friend's good deeds, he praises him in his presence, he speaks ill of him in his absence.
Let us be done with the notion that religion is confined to petty pieties and small constraints. All too often people who have possessed these pieties have wrought great evil.
In what way, or by what manner of working, God changes a soul from evil to good, how He impregnates the barren rock--the priceless gems and gold--is to the human mind an impenetrable mystery, in all cases alike.
Disturbers are to be rebuked, the low spirited to be encouraged, the infirm to be supported, objectors confuted, the treacherous guarded against, the unskilled taught, the lazy aroused, the contentious restrained, the haughty repressed, the poor relieved, the oppressed liberated, the good approved, the evil borne with, and all are to be loved!
There comes an end to all things; the most capacious measure is filled at last; and this brief condescension to evil finally destroyed the balance of my soul.
Evil always wins through the strength of its splendid dupes; and there has in all ages been a disastrous alliance between abnormal innocence and abnormal sin.
For the good are always the merry, / Save by an evil chance,/ And the merry love the fiddle,/ And the merry love to dance: / And when the folk there spy me,/ They will all come up to me, / With,”Here is the fiddler of Dooney!” / And dance like a wave of the sea.
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.
You are good when you are fully awake in your speech, Yet you are not evil when you sleep while your tongue staggers without purpose. And even stumbling speech may strengthen a weak tongue.