Wickedness Quotes - Page 13

• I know not how to express better, what my sins appear to me to be, than by heaping infinite upon infinite, and multiplying infinite by infinite . . . When I look into my heart and take a view of my wickedness, it looks like an abyss infinitely deeper than hell.

  Jonathan Edwards

  Heart, Views, Looks

  Jonathan Edwards, Henry Rogers, Sereno Edwards Dwight, Edward Hickman (1834). “Works”, p.90

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• A rake is a composition of all the lowest, most ignoble, degrading, and shameful vices; they all conspire to disgrace his character, and to ruin his fortune; while wine and the pox content which shall soonest and most effectually destroy his constitution.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Drinking, Wine, Character

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• Every age and every nation has certain characteristic vices, which prevail almost universally, which scarcely any person scruples to avow, and which even rigid moralists but faintly censure. Succeeding generations change the fashion of their morals with the fashion of their hats and their coaches; take some other kind of wickedness under their patronage, and wonder at the depravity of their ancestors.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Fashion, Age, Generations

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• The wickedness of mankind makes it necessary for the law to suppose them better than they really are.

  Baron de Montesquieu

  Law, Mankind

  Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu (2015). “The Spirit of Laws”, p.125, Library of Alexandria

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• I am sorry to say we whites have a sad reputation among many of the Polynesians. The natives of these islands are naturally of a kindly and hospitable temper, but there has been implanted among them an almost instinctive hate of the white man. They esteem us, with rare exceptions, such as some of the missionaries, the most barbarous, treacherous, irreligious, and devilish creatures on the earth.

  Herman Melville

  Sorry, Hate, Men

  Herman Melville (1987). “Piazza Tales and Other Prose Pieces, 1839-1860: Volume Nine, Scholarly Edition”, p.415, Northwestern University Press

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• But as the old Confusion of tongues was laudable, when men who were of one language in wickedness and impiety, even as some now venture to be, were building the Tower; for by the confusion of their language the unity of their intention was broken up, and their undertaking destroyed; so much more worthy of praise is the present miraculous one. For being poured from One Spirit upon many men, it brings them again into harmony. And there is a diversity of Gifts, which stands in need of yet another Gift to discern which is the best, where all are praiseworthy.

  Gregory of Nazianzus

  Men, Broken, Diversity

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• As our culture has become increasingly hostile to Christianity, it has become correspondingly open to wickedness.

  Rick Scarborough

  Christian, Religious, Culture

  Rick Scarborough (2000). “Enough is Enough: A Call to Christian Involvement”

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• Wicked people never have time for reading. It's one of the reasons for their wickedness.

  Daniel Handler

  Reading, People, Wicked

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• We must repay goodness and wickedness: but why exactly to the person who has done us a good or a wicked turn?

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Wicked, Done, Goodness

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• For as to the dispersing of Books, that Circumstance does perhaps as much harm as good: Since Nonsense flies with greater Celerity, and makes greater Impression than Reason; though indeed no particular species of Nonsense is so durable. But the several Forms of Nonsense never cease succeeding one another; and Men are always under the Dominion of some one or other, though nothing was ever equal in Absurdity and Wickedness to our present Patriotism.

  David Hume

  Book, Men, Dominion

  David Hume, J. Y. T. Greig (2011). “The Letters of David Hume:”, p.239, Oxford University Press, USA

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• It is privilege that causes evil in the world, not wickedness, and not men.

  Lincoln Steffens

  Men, Evil, World

  Lincoln Steffens (1931). “The Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens ...”, Harcourt

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• The whole life of Demosthenes... leaves the impression of a melancholy state of things, and of the brazen insolence of wickedness. A particularly striking idea of how things really were in Greece can be obtained from one feature of life - the sons who turned out badly.... the sons of gifted but arrogant fathers turned out merely arrogant, the grandsons hopeless; it is respect alone that sustains families and gives them traditions.

  Jacob Burckhardt

  Father, Son, Ideas

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• Your wickedness makes you as it were heavy as lead, and to tend downwards with great weight and pressure towards hell; and if God should let you go, you would immediately sink and switfly
  descend and plunge into the bottomless gulf, and your healthy constitution, and your own care and prudence, and best contrivance, and all your righteousness, would have no more influence to
  uphold you and keep you out of hell, than a spider's web would have to stop a fallen rock.

  Jonathan Edwards

  Rocks, Healthy, Spiders

  Jonathan Edwards (2012). “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God and Other Puritan Sermons”, p.177, Courier Corporation

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• God indeed tempteth no man; but yet we ask, in this petition, that he would keep and preserve us, lest the devil, the world, and our own flesh delude and draw us away from the true faith, and throw us into superstition, distrust, despair, and other grievous sins and wickedness; and that, if we should be tempted therewith even to the highest degree, we still may conquer, and at last triumph over them.

  Martin Luther

  Men, Despair, Devil

  Martin Luther (2017). “Martin Luther's Table Talk”, p.72, Gideon House Books

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• The question of good and evil remains in irremediable chaos for those who seek to fathom it in reality. It is mere mental sport to the disputants, who are captives that play with their chains.

  Voltaire

  Sports, Reality, Play

  Voltaire (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of Voltaire (Illustrated)”, p.4171, Delphi Classics

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• Religion is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize humankind; and, for my part, I sincerely detest it as I detest everything that is cruel.

  Thomas Paine

  Age Of Reason, Sincerely, Humankind

  Thomas Paine (1934). “The Works of Thomas Paine: His Epoch-making Writings in Religion, Government, Human Rights and International Relations”, New York : .H. Wise

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• Death is not the worst evil, but rather when we wish to die and cannot.

  Sophocles

  Wish To Die, Evil, Worst

  "Electra". Play by Sophocles, Line 1007. "Bartlett's Familiar Quotations", 10th edition, 1919.

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• The holy man, though he be distressed, does not eat food mixed with wickedness. The lion, though hungry, will not eat what is unclean.

  Sakya Pandita

  Men, Doe, Lions

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• The animals share with us the privilege of having a soul Alas, what wickedness to swallow flesh into our own flesh, to fatten our greedy bodies by cramming in other bodies, to have one living creature fed by the death of another! In the midst of such wealth as earth, the best of mothers, provides, yet nothing satisfies you, but to behave like the Cyclopes, inflicting sorry wounds with cruel teeth! You cannot appease the hungry cravings of your wicked, gluttonous stomachs except by destroying some other life.

  Pythagoras

  Mother, Sorry, Philosophical

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• A good Soul hath neither too great joy, nor too great sorrow: for it rejoiceth in goodness; and it sorroweth in wickedness. By the means whereof, when it beholdeth all things, and seeth the good and bad so mingled together, it can neither rejoice greatly; nor be grieved with over much sorrow.

  Pythagoras

  Mean, Joy, Soul

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• Alas, what wickedness to swallow flesh into our own flesh, to fatten our greedy bodies by cramming in other bodies, to have one living creature fed by the death of another!

  Pythagoras

  Vegetarianism, Body, Flesh

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• What is the benefit of fasting in our body while filling our souls with innumerable evils? He who does not play at dice, but spends his leisure otherwise, what nonsense does he not utter? What absurdities does he not listen to? Leisure without the fear of God is, for those who do not know how to use time, the teacher of wickedness.

  Saint Basil

  Teacher, Play, Evil

  Saint Basil (2010). “Exegetic Homilies (The Fathers of the Church, Volume 46)”, p.133, CUA Press

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• So far as we are human, what we do must be either evil or good: so far as we do evil or good, we are human: and it is better, in a paradoxical way, to do evil than to do nothing: at least we exist.

  T. S. Eliot

  Evil, Way, Paradoxical

  T.S. Eliot (2016). “The Letters of T. S. Eliot Volume 6: 1932–1933”, p.225, Faber & Faber

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• The most detestable wickedness, the most horrid cruelties, and the greatest miseries, that have afflicted the human race have had their origin in this thing called revelation, or revealed religion.

  Thomas Paine

  Race, Atheism, Misery

  Thomas Paine (1852). “The Age of Reason: Being an Investigation of True and Fabulous Theology”, p.190

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• He who abhors and shuns the light of the Sun,He who refuses to behold with respect the living creation of God,He who leads the good to wickedness,He who makes the meadows waterless and the pastures desolate,He who lets fly his weapon against the innocent,An enemy of my faith, a destroyer of Thy principles is he, O Lord!

  Zoroaster

  Past, Light, Enemy

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