“On the other hand, what is really irrational and what truly cannot be explained is not evil but, contrarily, the good.”

Sí, eso es el bien: perdonar el mal. No hay etro bien.
Voces (1943)

The Devil's Notebook (1992)

Patriotism, or Peace? http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Patriotism,_or_Peace%3F (1896), translated by Nathan Haskell Dole<br>Variant:<br>I have already several times expressed the thought that in our day the feeling of patriotism is an unnatural, irrational, and harmful feeling, and a cause of a great part of the ills from which mankind is suffering, and that, consequently, this feeling – should not be cultivated, as is now being done, but should, on the contrary, be suppressed and eradicated by all means available to rational men. Yet, strange to say – though it is undeniable that the universal armaments and destructive wars which are ruining the peoples result from that one feeling – all my arguments showing the backwardness, anachronism, and harmfulness of patriotism have been met, and are still met, either by silence, by intentional misinterpretation, or by a strange unvarying reply to the effect that only bad patriotism (Jingoism or Chauvinism) is evil, but that real good patriotism is a very elevated moral feeling, to condemn which is not only irrational but wicked.<br>What this real, good patriotism consists in, we are never told; or, if anything is said about it, instead of explanation we get declamatory, inflated phrases, or, finally, some other conception is substituted for patriotism – something which has nothing in common with the patriotism we all know, and from the results of which we all suffer so severely.<br> Patriotism and Government http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Patriotism_and_Government (1900) <br class="br">Context: Tell people that war is an evil, and they will laugh; for who does not know it? Tell them that patriotism is an evil, and most of them will agree, but with a reservation. &quot;Yes,&quot; they will say, &quot;wrong patriotism is an evil; but there is another kind, the kind we hold.&quot; But just what this good patriotism is, no one explains.

Source: A Moveable Feast

Source: Metaphysics: Concept and Problems

Source: The Amber Spyglass

Source: Invisible Monsters