“So shall the world go on,
To good malignant, to bad men benign,
Under her own weight groaning.”
Source: Paradise Lost
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John Milton 190
English epic poet 1608–1674Related quotes
Canto XXX, lines 118–120 (tr. C. E. Norton).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Purgatorio
“Good and bad men are each less so than they seem.”
La faute des hommes supérieurs est de dépenser leurs jeunes années à se rendre dignes de la faveur. Pendant qu'ils thésaurisent, leur force est la science pour porter sans effort le poids d'une puissance qui les fuit; les intrigants, riches de mots et dépourvus d'idées, vont et viennent, surprennent les sots, et se logent dans la confiance des demi-niais.
The Wild Ass’s Skin (1831), Part II: A Woman Without a Heart
Frame of Government (1682)
Context: Governments, like clocks, go from the motion men give them; and as governments are made and moved by men, so by them they are ruined too. Wherefore governments rather depend upon men, than men upon governments. Let men be good, and the government cannot be bad; if it be ill, they will cure it. But, if men be bad, let the government be never so good, they will endeavor to warp and spoil it to their turn.
“The lesson is that dying men must groan;
And poets groan in rhymes that please the ear.”
Poem Don't let's spoil it all, I thought that we were going to be such good friends.