This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The fact of instability of evil is the moral order of the world.
Evil | Instability | Order | World |
Goodness must be denied a place among the aims of art. For Goodness is a qualification belonging to the constitution of reality, which in any of its individual actualizations is better or worse. Good and evil lie in depths and distances below and beyond appearance. They solely concern inter-relations within the real world. The real world is good when it is beautiful. Art has essentially to do with perfections attainable by purposeful adaptation of appearance.
Aims | Appearance | Art | Better | Evil | Good | Individual | Reality | World | Art |
The good man should be a lover of self (for he will both himself profit by doing noble acts, and will benefit his fellows), but the wicked man should not; for he will hurt both himself and his neighbors, following as he does evil passions.
Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, known as Dean Stanley
The best antidote against evils of all kinds, against the evil thoughts that haunt the soul, against the needless perplexities which distract the conscience, is to keep hold of the good we have. Impure thoughts will not stand against pure words and prayers and deeds. Little doubts will not avail against great certainties. Fix your affections on things above, and then you will less and less be troubled by the cares, the temptations, the troubles of things on earth.
Conscience | Deeds | Earth | Evil | Good | Little | Soul | Troubles | Will | Words |
If you would keep young and happy, be good; live a high moral life; practice the principles of the brotherhood of man; send out good thoughts to all, and think evil of no man. This is in obedience to the great natural law; to live otherwise is to break this great Divine law. Other things being equal, it is the cleanest, purest minds that live long and are happy. The man who is growing and developing intellectually does not grow old like the man who has stopped advancing, but when ambition, aspirations and ideals halt, old age begins.
Age | Ambition | Brotherhood | Evil | Good | Happy | Ideals | Law | Life | Life | Man | Obedience | Old age | Practice | Principles | Old | Think |
In the heart - pure being: “Isness alone is.” Outwardly - flow of events: “A dance, a rhythm.” Between - an evil ghost: “The impostor me,” who seems the very hub and first of things, but, scrutinized, dissolves and is not there. Pure being in the heart - be this, be still; flow of events without - cognize, accept; the evil ghost - be vigilant, expel; this is the path and all the wisdom of it.
Arnold J. Toynbee, fully Arnold Joseph Toynbee
Our generic evil of an institution of any kind is that people who have identified themselves with it are prone to make an idol of it.
Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield
Apologies only account for the evil which they cannot alter.
Evil |
Ayn Rand, born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum
Any refusal to recognize reality, for any reason whatever, has disastrous consequences. There are no evil thoughts except one: the refusal to think. Don't ignore your own desires... Don't sacrifice them. Examine their cause. There is a limit to how much you should have to bear.
Cause | Consequences | Evil | Reality | Reason | Sacrifice |
Evil is easily discovered; there is an infinite variety; good is almost unique. But some kinds of evil are almost as difficult to discover as that which we call good; and often particular evil of this class passes for good. It needs even a certain greatness of soul to attain to this, as to that which is good.
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from a religious conviction.
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.