“The sweetest and best qualities of our nature may be turned to evil, by the strong force of circumstance and of temptation.”
The Monthly Magazine
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Letitia Elizabeth Landon 785
English poet and novelist 1802–1838Related quotes
“Some of the evil of my tale may have been inherent in our circumstances.”
Source: Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1922), Ch. 1
Context: Some of the evil of my tale may have been inherent in our circumstances. For years we lived anyhow with one another in the naked desert, under the indifferent heaven. By day the hot sun fermented us; and we were dizzied by the beating wind. At night we were stained by dew, and shamed into pettiness by the innumerable silences of stars. We were a self-centred army without parade or gesture, devoted to freedom, the second of man's creeds, a purpose so ravenous that it devoured all our strength, a hope so transcendent that our earlier ambitions faded in its glare.
To Jussi Jalas, October 1, 1939. http://www.sibelius.fi/english/omin_sanoin/ominsanoin_16.htm
“Russia ... our natural ally against the fiendish temptation and corruption from the West.”
Rußland ... der uns von Natur gegebene Bundesgenosse gegen die teuflische Versuchung und Korruption des Westens ist. Source: National Socialist Letters (Nationalsozialistische Briefe), “National Socialism or Bolshevism”, (November 15, 1925), quoted in: Ralph Georg Reuth, Goebbels, Piper, 2nd ed., Munich, 1991, p. 96. ISBN 3-492-03183-8.
1920s
“May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house.”
“At all times and under all circumstances, we have the power to transform the quality of our lives.”
Interview with William Warren Bartley, cited in — [Bartley, William Warren, w:William Warren Bartley, Werner Erhard: the Transformation of a Man: the Founding of est, Clarkson N. Potter, Inc., 1978, New York, 247, 0-517-53502-5]
Variant: You and I possess within ourselves, at every moment of our lives and under all circumstances, the power to transform the quality of our lives.
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 190.