Evil man

“ Are we responsible for what we cannot help? I could not condemn any one but myself. The existence of evil is true, but how horrible! And how it spoils our lives.”
“Spoils our lives,” he repeated. “You are quite right! Tell me, can a man or a woman love two people at once? Is it possible to love evil and good?” ”

“ The evil we see upon earth, at which the cheek pales and the heart bleeds, is the breath of these spirits in hell who flow into the wills and understandings of men, infusing their own hatred and false persuasions into all who receive them. The wicked man is a kind of automaton moved from within by spirits more wicked than himself, spirits who cunningly make a vile slave of him and who delight in the tortures they inflict upon him, and through him upon others. ”

“ What a pitiful sight is malice, finding pleasure in revenge! Evil is sometimes a man's highest conception Image of the beast of right, until his grasp on good grows stronger, Then he loses pleasure in wickedness, and it becomes his torment. ”

“ All of evil which this man had accomplished to his knowledge flooded his brain and inflamed it while he held him pinned powerless to the ground, and stared pitilessly into the protruding, agonised eyes from which terror even could not drive the malevolent hatred they expressed. ”

“ For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornication, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness: all these evil things come from within, and defile the man."—Verses 20-23. ”

“ Recompense to no man evil for evil ... Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord. Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head. Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good. ”

“ Perversely comes in evil times, Where virtues are imputed crimes. His guilt is clear, the proofs are pregnant; A traitor to the vices regnant. What spirit, since the world began, Could always bear to strive with man? ”

“ Evil men have tried to kill our son—cruel, pitiless men who lurked in dark places and cast stones at him. Yea, they lurked in dark places, and cast stones at him, the cowardly villains! Yet suffer them not to have achieved their evil purpose, seeing that they are men who do offend Thee with their misdeeds, and pollute Thy earth with their abominations. ”

“ I would be glad if my new readers should appraise not only the detestable sinfulness and perversity of a soul warped by the force of evil, but also the great yearning of this soul—the evil evil atones to a certain degree in this truly human feeling; and in this feeling the afflicted man also communes with each one of us. ”

“ Far be it from us to make light of the demerit of sin, and to remonstrate with the Supreme Judge against a severe chastisement, of whatever moral nature we may regard the infliction to be. But still, what is man? He comes into the world with a nature fatally corrupt, and powerfully tending to [pg 298] actual evil. He comes among a crowd of temptations adapted to his innate evil propensities. ”

“ If it were possible for human eye to discern and to detect the thoughts that flutter around the heart of an unregenerate man—to mark their hue and their multitude, it would be found that they are indeed ‘evil.’ We speak not of the thief, and the murderer, and the adulterer, and such like, whose crimes draw down the cognizance of earthly tribunals, and whose unenviable character it is to take the lead in the paths of sin ”

“ Not with fear, not with doubt, recognize, O Mortal, the presence of Evil in the world. [Not, indeed, that the evil here narrated is the ordinary evil of the world,—the lesson it inculcates would be lost if so construed,—but that the mystery of evil, whatever its degree, only increases the necessity of faith in the vindication of the contrivance which requires infinity for its range, and eternity for its consummation. It is in the existence of evil that man finds his duties, and his soul its progress.] ”

“ The influence of the strong man's evil deed slowly percolates through insidious channels of which he never knows or dreams. The deed of folly or of guilt does its fatal work when the sinner who committed it has forgotten his wickedness. Who shall say where or when the results of one man's evil doing shall cease? The seed of sin engenders no common root, shooting straight upwards through the earth, and bearing a given crop. ”

“ Man, I reflected, brings upon himself a thousand calamities as consequences of his artifices and pride, and then, overlooking his own follies, gravely investigates the origin of what he calls EVIL:—He compromises every natural pleasure, to acquire fame among transient beings, who forget him nightly in sleep, and eternally in death ”

“ But he should have remained on the landing, and called to those below to bring lights, so as not to allow a chance of escape. Of course, he had no thought of evil.”
“And you connect that man with the evil?” ”

“ Every husband, every father, every brother, feared and loathed him as the incarnation of the Evil one—in their mean, narrow, tedious nauseating philosophy they held him as a perjured villain of the deepest dye, steeped in utterest infamy! ”

“ And by knowing the evil leaven, and its divers evil effects in ourselves, how it had wrought, and what it had done, we came to have a sense and knowledge of the states of others: and what we could not, nay, we dare not let live and continue in ourselves, as being manifested to us to proceed from an evil principle in the time of man's degeneracy, we could not comply with in others. ”

“ And a man, who sells any article, the direct tendency of which is to lead men into evil habits, and thus injure their souls, is guilty of breaking this Commandment. And in general, bad men—men, who give themselves up, without restraint, to the indulgence of their evil inclinations—are in heart spiritual murderers; for they are consociated, as to their spirits, with hell—with that Evil One, who "was a murderer from the beginning." ”

“ A fool the man who says, 'We will do evildoing in our turn, and our heart shall be comforted. We will be unjust, and it shall be the beginning of justice.' Evildoing is in evil desiring. Desire nothing, and evildoing will be done away. Injustice hurts only the unjust ”

“ But when they are remitted into their hell, they return to their former state."...
"If evil spirits could perceive that they were associated with man, and yet that they were spirits separate from him, and if they could flow in into the things of his body, they would attempt by a thousand means to destroy him; for they hate man with a deadly hatred."... ”

“ Multitudes think they like to do evil; yet no man ever really enjoyed doing evil since God made the world. ”

“ Here every other man is looked upon as hostile, inconsiderate, rapacious, cruel, cunning, be he noble or base ; evil is the distinguishing word for man, even for every conceivable living creature, e.g. for a god ; human, divine, is the same thing as devilish, evil. ”

“ The Occasional Expulsion of Evils WE can therefore understand why those general clearances of evil, to which from time to time the savage resorts, should commonly take the form of a forcible expulsion of devils. In these evil spirits primitive man sees the cause of many if not of most of his troubles, and he fancies that if he can only deliver himself from them, things will go better with him. ”

“ Out of evil, evil will come. We do not gather figs of thistles. Your life has been evil; your heart is bad. Can good emanate from this? You will go forth to the world in fair seeming, no trace of your sin visible to the eye, and you will spread the contagion of your sin. Listen to me, Myron Holder. ”

“ If evil thoughts at any time enter into the mind of a good man, he does not roll them under his tongue as a sweet morsel, but they are grievous and painful to him; ”

“ And certain things, though good and pure, when mixed, produce discordant things, yea, poisonous things, that men call evil things.
14. So evil is the inharmonious blending of the colours, tones, or forms of good.
15. Now, man is not all-wise, and yet has will his own. He has the power, and he uses it, to mix God's good things in a multitude of ways, and every day he makes discordant sounds, and evil things.
16. And every tone and form, be it of good, or ill, becomes a living thing, a demon, sprite, or spirit of a good or vicious kind.
17. Man makes his evil thus ”

“ Here is another sort of evil men described to us, that we may neither do like them, nor have any thing to do with them. 1. Such as (like Satan) do all the mischief they can by force and violence, as roaring lions, and not only by fraud and insinuation, as subtle serpents: They are violent men, that do all by rapine and oppression, that shut their eyes, meditating with the closest intention and application of mind to devise froward things, to contrive how they may do the greatest mischief to their neighbour, to do it effectually and yet securely to themselves ”

“ We dare not say such life-stories leave no trace behind, for true it is that the evil lives, when the doer of the evil is gone. The two daughters of this unhappy man were bearing the consequences of his sin. ”

“ If evil is supreme here, shall it not be so in that undiscovered country,—that life to come? The dreams that may come give him pause, and he either shuffles on, doubting, hesitating, and incapable of decision, or he hurls himself wildly against his fate. ”

“ In former days it was—"love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance." What is the fruit of the spirit of evil? Envy, malice, hatred, evil-speaking, lying and slandering one another and towards other people. ”

“ If we make religion our business, God will make it our blessedness.
verses 27-28
27 An ungodly man diggeth up evil: and in his lips there is as a burning fire. 28 A froward man soweth strife: and a whisperer separateth chief friends.
There are those that are not only vicious themselves, but spiteful and mischievous to others, and they are the worst of men; two sorts of such are here described:—1. Such as envy a man the honour of his good name, and do all they can to blast that by calumnies and misrepresentations: They dig up evil ”

“ How could there be an evil act which did not proceed from an antecedent evil principle or disposition? What becomes of the great common notion of mankind, on which his demonstration is erected? But we must allow the author to contradict himself, since he has now come around to the truth, that an evil act of the creature may and must have preceded the existence of moral evil in the world. ”

“ But then I sigh; and, with a piece of Scripture,
Tell them that God bids us do good for evil:
And thus I clothe my naked villany
With odd old ends stol'n forth of holy writ;
And seem a saint when most I play the devil.—
But, soft, here come my executioners. ”

“ Have you--in all your life of idle, vicious, luxury--have you ever feared to do evil if it appealed to your bestial nature? You know you have not. You have feared only the appearance of evil. To be as evil as you like so long as you can avoid the appearance of evil ”

“ To reason, justify, to apotheosize evil, to establish its ritual, to show the excellence of it—is this not worse than to commit it? To adore the demon, or love evil, the abstract or the concrete term of one and the same fact. ”

“ If we harbour vindictiveness, hatred, malice, and a spirit that produces evil within us, we are so far given up to the power of evil. But when I say that I am opposed to evil principles and their consequent practices, I use an expression that I think you can understand. ”