Source: Life and Fate
“Every man hath a good and a bad angel attending on him in particular, all his life long.”
Section 2, member 1, subsection 2, A Digression of the nature of Spirits, bad Angels, or Devils, and how they cause Melancholy.
The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Part I
“The difference between a good man and a bad one is the choice of cause.”
Source: The Legacy of Heorot (1987), Chapter 22 “The Last Grendel” (p. 231; quoting William James)
Colorado Springs Gazette-Telegraph, “Unlimited Government” (Dec. 29, 1961).
“The idea of the thing was attacked by good and bad men, in good faith and bad.”
Source: Fourth Mansions (1969), Ch. 4
Context: "There was a later time when sincere men tried to build an organization as wide as the world to secure the peace of the world. It had been tried before and it had failed before. Perhaps if it failed this time it would not be tried again for a very long while. The idea of the thing was attacked by good and bad men, in good faith and bad. The final realization of it was so close that it could be touched with the fingertips. A gambler wouldn't have given odds on it either way. It teetered, and it almost seemed as though it would succeed. Then members of that group interfered."
"And it failed, O'Claire?"
"No. It succeeded, Foley, as in the other case. It succeeded in so twisted a fashion that the Devil himself was puzzled as to whether he had gained or lost ground by it. And he isn't easily puzzled."
“The good needs fear no law,
It is his safety and the bad man's awe.”
The Old Law (c. 1615–18; printed 1656), with Thomas Middleton and William Rowley.
Letter http://www.trsite.org/content/pages/speaking-loudly (1 September 1903), Oyster Bay, New York
1900s
IX. On Providence, Fate, and Fortune.
On the Gods and the Cosmos
“The scoundrel has his good qualities, and the good man his weaknesses.”
Le scélérat a ses vertus, comme l'honnête homme a ses faiblesses.
Letter 32: Madame de Volanges to Madame la Présidente Tourvel. Trans. P.W.K. Stone (1961). http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Les_Liaisons_dangereuses_-_Lettre_32
Les liaisons dangereuses (1782)
1940s–present, A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)
“A good man knows when to sacrifice himself, a bad man survives but loses his soul.”
The Mission Song (2006)
