Banish Evil from the world? Nonsense! Encourage it, foster it, sponsor it. The world owes Evil a debt beyond imagination. Think! Without greed ambition falters. Without vanity art becomes idle musing. Without cruelty benevolence lapses to passivity. Superstition has shamed man into self-reliance and, without stupidity, where would be the savor of superior understanding?
Jack VanceRelated topics
ambition art benevolence beyond cruelty debt evil foster greed idle imagination man musing nonsense passivity savor self-reliance sponsor stupidity superior superstition think understanding vanity world owesRelated quotes
No mockery in this world ever sounds to me so hollow as that of being told to cultivate happiness. What does such advice mean? Happiness is not a potato, to be planted in mould, and tilled with manure. Happiness is a glory shining far down upon us out of Heaven. She is a divine dew which the soul, on certain of its summer mornings, feels dropping upon it from the amaranth bloom and golden fruitage of Paradise.
Charlotte Brontë
The last best hope of earth, two trillion dollars in debt, is spinning out of control, and all we can do is stare at a flickering cathode-ray tube as Ollie ''answers'' questions on TV while the press, resolutely irrelevant as ever, asks politicians if they have committed adultery. From V-J Day 1945 to this has been, my fellow countrymen, a perfect nightmare.
Gore Vidal
A mature person is one who does not think only in absolutes, who is able to be objective even when deeply stirred emotionally,who has learned that there is both good and bad in all people and in all things, and who walks humbly and deals charitably with the circumstances of life, knowing that in this world no one is all-knowing and therefore all of us need both love and charity.
Eleanor Roosevelt
The world, and whatever that be which we call the heavens, by the vault of which all things are enclosed, we must conceive to be a deity, to be eternal, without bounds, neither created nor subject at any time to destruction. To inquire what is beyond it is no concern of man; nor can the human mind form any conjecture concerning it.
Pliny the Elder
There are people who, when they encounter inability to understand, do not ask the Lord. But one must immediately say, "Lord, I am a sinful man and I don't understand as I should. But give me understanding, merciful One, as to how I must proceed." And the merciful Lord then inspires them as to what to do and what not to do.
Silouan the Athonite
