Source: The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values, and Spiritual Growth
“When one has once accepted and absorbed Evil, it no longer demands to be believed.”
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The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918)
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Franz Kafka 266
author 1883–1924Related quotes
“There is no magic when one no longer believes.”
Odin, in Ch. 6 : Frey's Ship
The Ship that Flew (1939)
“Contemporary Poetry Criticism”, p. 140
Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964 (1980)

“In youth one believes in democracy, later on, one has to accept it.”
Diary entry (20 March 1919), quoted in David Marquand, ‘ MacDonald, (James) Ramsay (1866–1937) http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/34704,’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Oct 2009
1910s

“The ulterior motives with which you absorb and assimilate Evil are not your own but those of Evil.”
29
The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918)
Context: The ulterior motives with which you absorb and assimilate Evil are not your own but those of Evil.
The animal wrests the whip from its master and whips itself in order to become master, not knowing that this is only a fantasy produced by a new knot in the master’s whiplash.

“When one has been threatened with a great injustice, one accepts a smaller as a favour.”
Journal entry (25 November 1855).

Quoted in Survey of Contemporary Literature (1977) by Frank Northen Magill, p. 4263

τοῖς πᾶσι κοινόν ἐστι τοὐξαμαρτάνειν:
ἐπεὶ δ᾽ ἁμάρτῃ, κεῖνος οὐκέτ᾽ ἔστ᾽ ἀνὴρ
ἄβουλος οὐδ᾽ ἄνολβος, ὅστις ἐς κακὸν
πεσὼν ἀκῆται μηδ᾽ ἀκίνητος πέλῃ.
Source: Antigone, Lines 1024-1027; cf. Book of Proverbs 28:13

Nobel Peace Prize Lecture (December 10, 2014)