Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Related Quotes

Publius Syrus

What greater evil could you wish a miser, than long life?

Character | Evil | Life | Life |

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Luxury is a remedy much worse than the disease it sets up to cure; or rather it is in itself the greatness of all evils; for every State, great or small: for, in order to maintain all the servants and vagabonds it creates, it brings oppression and ruin on the citizen and the laborer; it is like those scorching winds, which, covering the trees and plants with their devouring insects, deprive useful animals of their subsistence and spread famine and death wherever they blow.

Character | Death | Disease | Greatness | Luxury | Oppression | Order |

Publius Syrus

The evil that lies concealed is always the most serious.

Character | Evil |

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Luxury, which cannot be prevented among men who are tenacious of their own convenience and of the respect paid them by others, soon completes the evil society had begun, and, under the pretense of giving bread to the poor, whom it should never have made such, impoverishes all the rest, and sooner or later depopulates the State.

Character | Evil | Giving | Luxury | Men | Respect | Rest | Society | Society | Respect |

Joseph Raz

The rule of law is essentially a negative value. The law inevitably creates a great danger of arbitrary power - the rule of law is designed to minimize the danger created by the law itself. Similarly, the law may be unstable, obscure, retrospective, etc., and thus infringe people’s freedom and dignity. The rule of law is designed to prevent his danger as well. Thus the rule of law is a negative virtue in two senses: conformity to it does not cause good except through avoiding evil and the evil which is avoided is evil which could only have been caused by the law itself.

Cause | Character | Conformity | Danger | Dignity | Evil | Freedom | Good | Law | People | Power | Rule | Virtue | Virtue | Danger |

John A. Sanford, aka Jack

Jung said the truth of the matter is that the shadow is ninety percent gold. Whatever has been repressed holds a tremendous amount of energy, with a great positive potential. So the shadow, no matter how troublesome it may be, is not intrinsically evil. The ego, in its refusal of insight and its refusal to accept the entire personality, contributes much more to evil than the shadow.

Character | Ego | Energy | Evil | Gold | Insight | Personality | Truth |

John A. Sanford, aka Jack

To try to be good, and disregard one's darkness, is to fall victim to the evil in ourselves whose existence we have denied.

Character | Darkness | Evil | Existence | Good | Victim |

Sir G. Sinclair

Man has evil as well as good qualities peculiar to himself. Drunkenness places him as much below the level of the brutes as reason elevates him above them.

Character | Evil | Good | Man | Qualities | Reason |

William Gilmore Simms

Strong passions are the life of manly virtues. But they need not necessarily be evil because they are passions, and because they are strong. They may be likened to blood horses, that need training and the curb only, to enable those whom they carry to achieve the most glorious triumphs.

Character | Evil | Life | Life | Need | Training |