Frame of Government (1682)
Context: Governments, like clocks, go from the motion men give them; and as governments are made and moved by men, so by them they are ruined too. Wherefore governments rather depend upon men, than men upon governments. Let men be good, and the government cannot be bad; if it be ill, they will cure it. But, if men be bad, let the government be never so good, they will endeavor to warp and spoil it to their turn.
“Badness is only spoiled goodness.”
Book II, Chapter 2, "The Invasion"
Mere Christianity (1952)
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Clive Staples Lewis 272
Christian apologist, novelist, and Medievalist 1898–1963Related quotes
“Good people are only half as good, and bad people only half as bad, as other people regard them.”
A Thousand & One Epigrams: Selected from the Writings of Elbert Hubbard (1911)
“Golf is a good walk spoiled.”
"Twain probably never uttered [these] words," according to R. Kent Rasmussen, editor of The Quotable Mark Twain (1998).
"To play golf is to spoil an otherwise enjoyable walk" is found in H.S. Scrivener, "Memories of Men and Meetings" https://books.google.com/books?id=cYgCAAAAYAAJ&q=dicta#v=snippet&q=dicta&f=false, in Arthur Wallis Myers (ed.) Lawn Tennis at Home and Abroad New York:Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1903, p. 47. Scrivener attributes the aphorism to "my good friends the Allens". Reference from Quote Investigator http://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/28/golf-good-walk.
Misattributed
“There is only good and bad art.”
My Heart's in the Highlands (1939)
Source: The Most Beautiful Woman in Town & Other Stories
“There is no bad whiskey. There are only some whiskeys that aren't as good as others.”