Faith makes all evil good to us, and all good better; unbelief makes all good evil, and all evil worse. Faith laughs at the shaking of the spear; unbelief trembles at the shaking of a leaf, unbelief starves the soul; faith finds food in famine, and a table in the wilderness. In the greatest danger, faith says, “I have a great God.” When outward strength is broken, faith rests on the promises. In the midst of sorrow, faith draws the sting out of every trouble, and takes out the bitterness from every affliction.
– Richard Cecil
Faith | Good and Evil | Bitterness
To seek the highest good is to live well.
– Augustine
Good and Evil
The confession of evil works is the first beginning of good works.
– Augustine
Sin | Good and Evil | Confession
The more praying there is in the world, the better the world will be; the mightier the forces against evil everywhere.
– E.M. Bounds
Prayer | Good and Evil
You cannot make men good by law.
– C.S. Lewis
Good and Evil | Men
He that is kind is free, though he is a slave; he that is evil is a slave, though he be a king.
– Augustine
Kindness | Good and Evil | Freedom
Evil is easy, and has infinite forms.
– Blaise Pascal
Good and Evil
Desire and force between them are responsible for all our actions; desire causes our voluntary acts, force our involuntary.
– Blaise Pascal
Good and Evil
The humblest individual exerts some influence, either for good or evil, upon others.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Humility | Good and Evil
A man that does not know how to be angry does not know how to be good. Now and then a man should be shaken to the core with indignation over things evil.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Anger | Good and Evil
Beauty is indeed a good gift of God; but that the good may not think it a great good, God dispenses it even to the wicked.
– Augustine
Good and Evil | Beauty
Man’s true nature being lost, everything becomes his nature; as, his true good being lost, everything becomes his good.
– Blaise Pascal
Good and Evil
I realize that many Christians have not been praying because they have not accepted the reality of war in which we find ourselves. There is a spiritual war mode that we must appropriate. It is an aggressive stance that we take against evil. It is governed by love for people, but it is fearless and uncompromising with the powers of darkness that manipulate people to fulfill evil plans.
– Francis Frangipane
Prayer | Good and Evil
St. Augustine teaches us that there is in each man a Serpent, an Eve, and an Adam. Our senses and natural propensities are the Serpent; the excitable desire is the Eve; and reason is the Adam. Our nature tempts us perpetually; criminal desire is often excited; but sin is not completed till reason consents.
– Blaise Pascal
Good and Evil
If a thing is free to be good it is also free to be bad. And free will is what has made evil possible. Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having.
– C.S. Lewis
Good and Evil | Freedom | Joy
Too many Christians become bitter and angry in the conflict. If we descend into hatefulness, we have already lost the battle. We must cooperate with God in turning what was meant for evil into a greater good within us. This is why we bless those who would curse us: It is not only for their sakes but to preserve our own soul from its natural response toward hatred.
– Francis Frangipane
Bitterness | Good and Evil | Hatred
It is not only that sin consists in doing evil, but in not doing the good that we know.
– Harry Ironside
Good and Evil | Sin
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.
– Blaise Pascal
Religion | Good and Evil | Cheerfulness
All human evil comes from a single cause, man’s inability to sit still in a room.
– Blaise Pascal
Good and Evil
There is a Holy Trinity, and there is likewise a Trinity of Evil.
– A. W. Pink
Good and Evil | The Trinity
It is a law of our humanity, that man must know good through evil. No great principle ever triumphed but through much evil. No man ever progressed to greatness and goodness but through great mistakes.
– Frederick W. Robertson
Good and Evil
Evil has no substance of its own, but is only the defect, excess, perversion, or corruption of that which has substance.
– John Henry Newman
Good and Evil
The word “good” has many meanings. For example, if a man were to shoot his grandmother at a range of five hundred yards, I should call him a good shot, but not necessarily a good man.
– G.K. Chesterton
Good and Evil
The issue is now clear. It is between light and darkness and everyone must choose his side.
– G.K. Chesterton
Good and Evil | Light
The distinctions drawn between men are commonly based on the outward appearance of goodness or badness, on the ground of moral beauty or moral deformity–is this classification scientific? Or is there a deeper distinction between the Christian and the not-a-Christian as fundamental as that between the organic and the inorganic?
– Henry Drummond
Good and Evil
Right is right, even if everyone is against it; and wrong is wrong, even if everyone is for it.
– William Penn
Good and Evil
Good can exist without evil, whereas evil cannot exist without good.
– Thomas Aquinas
Good and Evil
The mind of him that worketh ill is not always corrupt; but the mind of him that defendeth evil is ever corrupt.
– Assorted Authors
Good and Evil
The power of choosing good and evil is within the reach of all.
– Origen
Good and Evil | Power
At the very moment when the pulpit has fallen strangely silent about sin, fiction can talk of little except evil, not indeed viewed as sin, but apparently as the invariable ways of a peculiarly repulsive insect, which it can’t help, poor thing; and there is no manner of use expecting anything from it, except the nastiness natural to it.
– A. J. Gossip
Good and Evil
Beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and devil are fighting there, and the battlefield is the heart of man.
– Fyodor Dostoevsky
Good and Evil | Beauty | The Heart
It is a wonderful thing that here and there in this hard, uncharitable world, there should still be left a few rare souls who think no evil.
– Henry Drummond
Good and Evil
‘My country, right or wrong’ is a thing no patriot would ever think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying ‘My mother, drunk or sober.’
– G.K. Chesterton
Good and Evil | Patriotism
I wish thy lot, now bad, still worse, my friend, for when at worst, they say, things always mend.
– John Owen
Good and Evil
How can a mere finite human being be sure that infinite wisdom would not tolerate certain short-range evils in order for more long-range goods that we can’t foresee.
– Peter Kreeft
Good and Evil
In contrast to the believer, the ungodly are not like trees but are like chaff. They have no roots, produce no fruit and are blown about.
– Warren Wiersbe
Good and Evil
How goodness heightens beauty!
– Hannah More
Good and Evil | Beauty
Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
Good and Evil
When you are right you cannot be too radical; when you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
Good and Evil
Any mind that is capable of real sorrow is capable of good.
– Harriet Beecher Stowe
Good and Evil
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
– Edmund Burke
Good and Evil
Without sin, the universe is a Solemn Game: and there is no good game without rules.
– C.S. Lewis
Good and Evil
Have we not come to such an impasse in the modern world that we must love our enemies – or else? The chain reaction of evil – hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars – must be broken, or else we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
Good and Evil | Hatred | Enemies
Nature, more of a stepmother than a mother in several ways, has sown a seed of evil in the hearts of mortals, especially in the more thoughtful men, which makes them dissatisfied with their own lot and envious of another’s.
– Desiderius Erasmus
Good and Evil | Discontentment | Envy
Telling us to obey instinct is like telling us to obey ‘people.’ People say different things: so do instincts. Our instincts are at war. Each instinct, if you listen to it, will claim to be gratified at the expense of the rest.
– C.S. Lewis
Good and Evil
Whenever you find a man who says he doesn’t believe in a real Right and Wrong, you will find the same man going back on this a moment later.
– C.S. Lewis
Good and Evil
The eternal stars shine out as soon as it is dark enough.
– Thomas Carlyle
Good and Evil
Our best performances are so stained with sin, that it is hard to know whether they are good works or bad works.
– Charles Spurgeon
Good and Evil
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.
– C.S. Lewis
Good and Evil
Of two evils, the less is always to be chosen.
– Thomas a Kempis
Good and Evil
If the one be good, the other must be evil. The only way to justify the stage, as it is, as it has ever been, as it is ever likely to be, is to condemn the Bible – the same individual cannot defend both.
– Hannah More
Good and Evil | The Bible
Sin is not confined to the evil things we do. It is the evil within us, the evil which we are.
– Karl Barth
Good and Evil
As in the candle I know there is both light and heat, but put out the candle, and they are both gone.
– John Selden
Good and Evil
There is no possible source of evil except good.
– Augustine
Good and Evil
Those that hate goodness are sometimes nearer than those that know nothing at all about it and think they have it already.
– C.S. Lewis
Good and Evil | IgnoranceHatred
Clean and unclean birds, the dove and the raven, are yet in the ark.
– Augustine
Good and Evil
Do not let us mistake necessary evils for good.
– C.S. Lewis
Good and Evil
Now is our chance to choose the right side. God is holding back to give us that chance. It won’t last forever. We must take it or leave it.
– C.S. Lewis
Good and EvilHoliness
The prayers of God’s saints strengthen the unborn generation against the desolating waves of sin and evil.
– E.M. Bounds
Prayer | Good and Evil
Badness is only spoiled goodness.
– C.S. Lewis
Good and Evil
To return good for good is human; to return evil for evil is brutal; to return evil for good is diabolical; but to return good for evil is Divine.
– Assorted Authors
Good and Evil
If we do wrong and no harm comes of it, we are not thereby justified. If we did evil and good came of it, the evil would be just as evil. It is not the result of the action, but the action itself which God weighs.
– Charles Spurgeon
Good and Evil
Evil is but the shadow, that, in this world, always accompanies good. You may have a world without shadow, but it will be a world without light – a mere dim, twilight world. If you would deepen the intensity of the light, you must be content to bring into deeper blackness and more distinct and definite outline, the shade that accompanies it.
– Frederick W. Robertson
Good and Evil
God would never permit evil, if He could not bring good out of evil.
– Augustine
Good and Evil
Only Christianity and its teachings can explain the purpose and meaning of this world–and also gives the basis for right and wrong, good and evil, etc.
– Ken Ham
Christianity | Good and Evil
Every year of my life I grow more convinced that it is wisest and best to fix our attention on the beautiful and the good, and dwell as little as possible on the evil and the false.
– Richard Cecil
Good and Evil | Contentment | Beauty
There are a hundred men hacking at the branches of evil to everyone who is striking at the roots of evil.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Good and Evil
One improper word or act will neutralize the effect of many good ones; and one base deed, after years of noble service, will cover them all with shame.
– James H. Aughey
Good and Evil
Men have never been good, they are not good and they never will be good.
– Karl Barth
Good and EvilMen
We desperately need to understand something of the magnitude of sin, of evil, and of gross wickedness in this world if we are to appreciate our redemption. God’s love, grace, and mercy shine all the brighter against the awful reality of evil. Indeed, the very existence of evil is a powerful proof of God’s existence and holiness.
– Dave Hunt
God | Good and Evil | Redemption
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.
– G.K. Chesterton
Good and Evil
Of two evils choose neither.
– Charles Spurgeon
Good and Evil
There is in man a mint always at work: his mind coining evil thoughts, his heart, evil desires and carnal emotion; and his memory is the closet and storehouse wherein they are kept.
– Thomas Manton
Good and Evil
One that confounds good and evil is an enemy to good.
– Edmund Burke
Good and Evil
Evil is a parasite, not an original thing.
– C.S. Lewis
Good and Evil
Good deeds are such things that no man is saved for them, nor without them.
– Thomas Adams
Good and Evil
As covetousness is the root of all evil, so poverty is the worst of all snares.
– Assorted Authors
Good and Evil
A Christian must always be kind, gracious, and wise in order to conquer evil by good.
– John of Kronstadt
Christians | Good and Evil
Right intention is to the actions of a man what the soul is to the body, or the root to the tree.
– Jeremy Taylor
Good and Evil
Many have puzzled themselves about the origin of evil. I am content to observe that there is evil, and that there is a way to escape from it, and with this I begin and end.
– John Newton
Good and Evil
Your actions, in passing, pass not away, for every good work is a grain of seed for eternal life.
– Assorted Authors
Good and Evil | Work | Eternal Life
Perhaps it is impossible for a person who does no good to do no harm.
– Harriet Beecher Stowe
Good and Evil
Those who commit injustice bear the greatest burden.
– Hosea Ballou
Good and Evil
The difference between God’s side and the devil’s is the difference between heaven and hell.
– Billy Sunday
Good and Evil
Augustine does not disagree with this when he teaches that it is a faculty of the reason and the will to choose good with the assistance of grace; evil, when grace is absent.
– John Calvin
Good and Evil
God judged it better to bring good out of evil than to suffer no evil to exist.
– Augustine
Good and Evil
Whenever vanity and gaiety, a love of pomp and dress, furniture, equipage, buildings, great company, expensive diversions, and elegant entertainments get the better of the principles and judgments of men and women, there is no knowing where they will stop, nor into what evils, natural, moral, or political, they will lead us.
– John Quincy Adams
Good and Evil
Neutrality in things good or evil is both odious and prejudicial, but in matters of an indifferent nature, is safe and commendable.
– Joseph Hall
Good and Evil
We declare, upon Scriptural authority, that the human will is so desperately set on mischief, so depraved, and so inclined to everything that is evil, and so disinclined to everything that is good, that without the powerful, supernatural, irresistible influence of the Holy Spirit, no human will ever be constrained towards Christ.
– Charles Spurgeon
Good and Evil | The Holy Spirit
Men’s hearts ought not to be set against one another, but set with one another and all against evil only.
– Thomas Carlyle
Good and Evil
The truest definition of evil is that which represents it as something contrary to nature. Evil is evil because it is unnatural. A vine which should bear olive-berries – an eye to which blue seems yellow, would be diseased. An unnatural mother, an unnatural son, an unnatural act, are the strongest terms of condemnation.
– Frederick W. Robertson
Good and Evil | Nature
Much of what happens in our world is evil and bad, but God specializes in bringing good out of it.
– Rick Warren
Good and Evil
At the very moment when the pulpit has fallen strangely silent about sin, fiction can talk of little except evil, not indeed viewed as sin, but apparently as the invariable ways of a peculiarly repulsive insect, which it can’t help, poor thing; and there is no manner of use expecting anything from it, except the nastiness natural to it.
– A.J. Gossip
Good and Evil
A good end cannot sanctify evil means; nor must we ever do evil, that good may come of it.
– William Penn
Good and Evil
God’s pleasure or displeasure is not founded upon the principle of good and evil. Rather, God traces the source of all things. An action may be quite correct, yet God inquires, what is its origin?
– Watchman Nee
Good and Evil
Whatsoever is good; the same is also approved of God.
– Assorted Authors
Good and Evil
As no good is done, or spoken, or thought by any man without the assistance of God, working in and with those that believe in him, so there is no evil done, or spoken, or thought without the assistance of the devil, who worketh with strong though secret power in the children of unbelief. All the works of our evil nature are the work of the devil.
– John Wesley
Good and Evil | Unbelief
When a man is getting better he understands more and more clearly the evil that is still left in him. When a man is getting worse he understands his own badness less and less.
– C.S. Lewis
Good and Evil
Defeat in doing right is nevertheless victory.
– Frederick W. Robertson
Good and Evil | Victory
An evil man is clay to God, and wax to the devil; a good man is God’s wax, and Satan’s clay.
– Joseph Hall
Good and Evil