“In every enterprise is no greater evil than bad companionship”

Source: The Chronicles of Prydain (1964–1968), Book II: The Black Cauldron (1965), Chapter 20

Source: The Dress Lodger

The Law (1850)

Principles of Legislation (1830), Ch. X : Analysis of Political Good and Evil; How they are spread in society
Context: It is with government, as with medicine. They have both but a choice of evils. Every law is an evil, for every law is an infraction of liberty: And I repeat that government has but a choice of evils: In making this choice, what ought to be the object of the legislator? He ought to assure himself of two things; 1st, that in every case, the incidents which he tries to prevent are really evils; and 2ndly, that if evils, they are greater than those which he employs to prevent them.
There are then two things to be regarded; the evil of the offence and the evil of the law; the evil of the malady and the evil of the remedy.
An evil comes rarely alone. A lot of evil cannot well fall upon an individual without spreading itself about him, as about a common centre. In the course of its progress we see it take different shapes: we see evil of one kind issue from evil of another kind; evil proceed from good and good from evil. All these changes, it is important to know and to distinguish; in this, in fact, consists the essence of legislation.

Source: Life, Sex, and Ideas: The Good Life Without God (2002), Chapter 9, “Evil” (p. 34)

Source: The Visible Hand (1977), p. 6.

Plato, Phaedo

Il faut de plus grandes vertus pour soutenir la bonne fortune que la mauvaise.
Maxim 25.
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)

Letter to his wife, Mary Anne Lee http://www.fair-use.org/robert-e-lee/letter-to-his-wife-on-slavery (27 December 1856)
1850s
Context: In this enlightened age, there are few I believe, but what will acknowledge, that slavery as an institution, is a moral & political evil in any Country. It is useless to expatiate on its disadvantages. I think it however a greater evil to the white man than to the black race, & while my feelings are strongly enlisted in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more strong for the former. The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, socially & physically. The painful discipline they are undergoing, is necessary for their instruction as a race, & I hope will prepare & lead them to better things. How long their subjugation may be necessary is known & ordered by a wise Merciful Providence.