“Evil sometimes seems good
To a man whose mind
A god leads to destruction.”

—  Sophocles

Source: Antigone, Lines 620-3

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Evil sometimes seems good To a man whose mind A god leads to destruction." by Sophocles?
Sophocles photo
Sophocles 68
ancient Greek tragedian -496–-406 BC

Related quotes

Cassandra Clare photo

“He had never felt entirely comfortable around Raphael. Raphael seemed to him like Loki or some other trickster God, sometimes working for good and sometimes for evil, but always in his own interests.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Source: City of Heavenly Fire

“Few people can see God, and it seems an even bolder mind to see the Devil. Active evil is more incomprehensible than active good, and so it ought to be.”

Margery Allingham (1904–1966) English writer of detective fiction

The Oaken Heart

Ray Bradbury photo

“Good to evil seems evil”

Ray Bradbury book Something Wicked This Way Comes

Source: Something Wicked This Way Comes

Vernor Vinge photo

“Peregrine Wickwrackrum was of two minds about evil: when enough rules get broken, sometimes there is good amid the carnage.”

Vernor Vinge A Fire Upon the Deep (1st edition)

Source: A Fire Upon the Deep (1992), Chapter 2 (p. 18).

Sallustius photo

“If evil exists it must exist either in Gods or minds or souls or bodies. It does not exist in any God, for all god is good.”

Sallustius Roman philosopher and writer

XII. The origin of evil things; and that there is no positive evil.
On the Gods and the Cosmos
Context: If evil exists it must exist either in Gods or minds or souls or bodies. It does not exist in any God, for all god is good. If anyone speaks of a "bad mind" he means a mind without mind. If of a bad soul, he will make the soul inferior to body, for no body in itself is evil. If he says that evil is made up of soul and body together, it is absurd that separately they should not be evil, but joined should create evil.

Thomas Aquinas photo

“It is on account neither of God's weakness nor ignorance that evil comes into the world, but rather it is due to the order of his wisdom and the greatness of his goodness that diverse grades of goodness occur in things, many of which would be lacking if no evil were permitted. Indeed, the good of patience would not exist without the evil of persecution; nor the good of preservation of life in a lion if not for the evil of the destruction of the animals on which it lives.”

Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) Italian Dominican scholastic philosopher of the Roman Catholic Church

De Potentia (On Power) q. 3, art. 6, ad 4

Bion of Borysthenes photo

“Just as the good actor perform well whatever role the poet assigns, so too must the good man perform whatever Fortune assigns. For she, says Bion, just like a poet, sometimes assigns the leading role, sometimes that of the supporting role; sometimes that of a king, sometimes that of a beggar. Do not, therefore, being a supporting actor, desire the role of the lead.”

Bion of Borysthenes (-325–-246 BC) ancient greek philosopher

As quoted by Teles of Megara, fr. 2, On Self-Sufficiency

“Sometimes I believe that evil is everything, and that good is only a beautiful desire for evil.”

Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Argentinian poet

A veces creo el mal es todo y que el bien es sólo un bello deseo del mal.
Voces (1943)

“Evil's just destructive? Then storms are evil, if it's that simple. And we have fire, and there there's hail. Underwriters lump it all under 'Acts of God.”

Thomas Harris The Silence of the Lambs

Source: The Silence of the Lambs

Related topics