“Goodness was more difficult than evil. Evil men knew that more than good men. That's why they became evil. That's why it stuck with them. Evil was for those who could never reach the truth. It was a mask for stupidity and lack of love. even of people laughed at the notion of goodness, if they found it sentimental, or nostalgic, he said, it had to be fought for.”
Let the Great World Spin (2009), Book One: A Fear of Love
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Colum McCann 71
Irish writer and journalist 1965Related quotes
“The best men are not consistent in good—why should the worst men be consistent in evil?”
Source: The Woman in White
“Is there worse evil than that which goes in the mask of good?”
Source: The Chronicles of Prydain (1964–1968), Book V : The High King (1968), Chapter 11 (p. 142)

Reputation
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XIV - Higgledy-Piggledy

Optimism
Poetry quotes, Poems of Pleasure (1900)
Context: I find a rapture linked with each despair,
Well worth the price of anguish. I detect
More good than evil in humanity.
Love lights more fires than hate extinguishes,
And men grow better as the world grows old.

“There is a certain kind of morality which is even more alien to good and evil than amorality is.”
“The responsibility of writers,” p. 169
On Science, Necessity, and the Love of God (1968)
“Evil will never be countered while good men do nothing.”
Source: Drenai series, Quest for Lost Heroes, Ch. 10