Samuel Johnson Evil Quotations

All the arguments which are brought to represent poverty as no evil show it evidently to be a great evil.

The two great movers of the human mind are the desire for good, and the fear of evil

Let him go abroad to a distant country; let him go to some place where he is not known. Don't let him go to the devil, where he is known.

To scatter praise or blame without regard to justice is to destroy the distinction of good and evil. Many have no other test of actions than general opinion; and all are so far influenced by a sense of reputation that they are often restrained by fear of reproach, and excited by hope of honour, when other principles have lost their power.

Power is gradually stealing away from the many to the few, because the few are more vigilant and consistent.

Men are most powerfully affected by those evils which themselves feel, or which appear before their own eyes.

The misery of man proceeds not from any single crush of overwhelming evil, but from small vexations continually repeated.

Misery is caused for the most part, not by a heavy crush of disaster, but by the corrosion of less visible evils, which canker enjoyment, and undermine security. The visit of an invader is necessarily rare, but domestic animosities allow no cessation.

Falsehoods of convenience or vanity, falsehoods from which no evil immediately visible ensues, except the general degradation of human testimony, are very lightly uttered, and once uttered are sullenly supported.

Where secrecy or mystery begins, vice or roguery is not far off.

There are indeed, in the present corruption of mankind, many incitements to forsake truth: the need of palliating our own faults and the convenience of imposing on the ignorance or credulity of others so frequently occur; so many immediate evils are

Our minds should not be empty because if they are not preoccupied by good, evil will break in upon them.

He that outlives a wife whom he has long loved, sees himself disjoined from the only mind that has the same hopes, and fears, and interest; from the only companion with whom he has shared much good and evil; and with whom he could set his mind at liberty, to retrace the past or anticipate the future. The continuity of being is lacerated; the settled course of sentiment and action is stopped; and life stands suspended and motionless.

Those who are in the power of evil habits must conquer them as they can; and conquered they must be, or neither wisdom nor happiness can be attained: but those who are not yet subject to their influence may, by timely caution, preserve their freedom;

All severity that does not tend to increase good, or prevent evil, is idle.

Sir, you must not neglect doing a thing immediately good from fear of remote evil; -from fear of its being abused.

Wickedness is always easier than virtue; for it takes the short cut to everything.

All this [wealth] excludes but one evil, poverty.

Combinations of wickedness would overwhelm the world, by the advantage which licentious principles afford, did not those who have long practised perfidy grow faithless to each other.

Ignorance, when it is voluntary, is criminal; and he may be properly charged with evil who refused to learn how he might prevent it.

It is unpleasing to represent our affairs to our own disadvantage; yet it is necessary to shew the evils which we desire to be removed.

Wine gives great pleasure; and every pleasure is of itself a good. It is a good, unless counterbalanced by evil.

Many of our miseries are merely comparative: we are often made unhappy, not by the presence of any real evil, but by the absence of some fictitious good; of something which is not required by any real want of nature, which has not in itself any power of gratification, and which neither reason nor fancy would have prompted us to wish, did we not see it in the possession of others.

Almost all the moral good which is left among us is the apparent effect of physical evil.

Evil is uncertain in the same degree as good, and for the reason that we ought not to hope too securely, we ought not to fear with to much dejection.

Fear is implanted in us as a preservative from evil but its duty, like that of other passions, is not to overbear reason, but to assist it. It should not be suffered to tyrannize in the imagination, to raise phantoms of horror, or to beset life with supernumerary distresses.

In all evils which admits a remedy, impatience should be avoided, because it wastes the time and attention in complaints which, if properly applied, might remove the cause.

The worst evils are those that never arrive.

To grieve for evils is often wrong; but it is much more wrong to grieve without them. All sorrow that lasts longer than its cause is morbid, and should be shaken off as an attack of melancholy, as the forerunner of a greater evil than poverty or pain.

Some have little power to do good, and have likewise little strength to resist evil.

To prevent evil is the great end of government, the end for which vigilance and severity are properly employed.

The good of our present state is merely comparative, and the evil which every man feels will be sufficient to disturb and harass him if he does not know how much he escapes.

As the greatest liar tells more truths than falsehoods, so may it be said of the worst man, that he does more good than evil.

Still we love The evil we do, until we suffer it.

No evil is insupportable but that which is accompanied with consciousness of wrong.

The business of life is to go forward; he who sees evil in prospect meets it in his way, and he who catches it by retrospection turns back to find it. That which is feared may sometimes be avoided, but that which is regretted to-day may be regretted again to-morrow.

Fear is implanted in us as a preservative from evil.