“Submit to the present evil, lest a greater one befall you.”

— Phaedrus, book Fables

Book I, fable 2, line 31.
Fables

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Submit to the present evil, lest a greater one befall you." by Phaedrus?

Phaedrus16

Latin fabulist and probably a Thracian slave -20

Related quotes

“When one with honeyed words but evil mind
Persuades the mob, great woes befall the state.”

Euripidés Orestes

Source: Orestes (408 BC), l. 907

“The soul must accept guilt in order to destroy existing evil, lest it incur the greater guilt of idyllic withdrawal, of seeming to be good by putting up with wrong.”

Ernst Bloch (1885–1977) German philosopher

Aber es steht doch in der Regel so, daß die Seele schuldig werden muß, um das schlecht Bestehende zu vernichten, um nicht durch idyllischen Rückzug, scheingute Duldung des Unrechts noch schuldiger zu werden.
Source: Man on His Own: Essays in the Philosophy of Religion (1959), p. 36

“I used to suppose that certain evils could never befall a being in possession of a sound mind”

Charles Brockden Brown (1771–1810) American novelist, historian and editor

Wieland; or, the Transformation (1798)
Context: I used to suppose that certain evils could never befall a being in possession of a sound mind; that true virtue supplies us with energy which vice can never resist; that it was always in our power to obstruct, by his own death, the designs of an enemy who aimed at less than our lives.

“Let evil swiftly befall those who have wrongly condemned us - God will avenge us.”

Jacques de Molay (1243–1314) Grand Master of the Knights Templar

Before he died it is said that he cursed both King Phillip and Pope Clement V, summoning them before God, the Supreme Judge, before the year was over.