
“I know, indeed, the evil of that I purpose; but my inclination gets the better of my judgment.”
Source: Medea (431 BC), Line 1078
Source: Medea
“I know, indeed, the evil of that I purpose; but my inclination gets the better of my judgment.”
Source: Medea (431 BC), Line 1078
"Liberty In England", Speech (June 21, 1935), reprinted in Abinger Harvest (1936).
“A: I think pain the greatest of all evils.
M: Greater than disgrace?
A: That indeed I dare not affirm; and yet I am ashamed to be so soon thrown down from my position.
M: It would have been a greater shame to have maintained it.”
A: Dolorem existimo maximum malorum omnium.
M: Etiamne malus quam dedecus?
A: Non audeo id dicere equidem, et me pudet tam cito de sententia esse deiectam.
M: Magis esset pudendum, si in sententia permaneres.
Book II, Chapter V; translation by Andrew P. Peabody
Tusculanae Disputationes – Tusculan Disputations (45 BC)
“I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.”
Source: September 1, 1939 (1939), Lines 19–22
“Suffering willingly endured is stronger than evil, it spells death to evil.”
Source: Discipleship (1937), Revenge, p. 142.
Context: Jesus bluntly calls the evil person evil. If I am assailed, I am not to condone or justify aggression. Patient endurance of evil does not mean a recognition of its rights. That is sheer sentimentality, and Jesus will have nothing to do with it. The shameful assault, the deed of violence and the act of exploitation are still evil. … The very fact that the evil which assaults him is unjustifiable makes it imperative that he should not resist it, but play it out and overcome it by patiently enduring the evil person. Suffering willingly endured is stronger than evil, it spells death to evil.
29a–b
Alternate translation: "To fear death, is nothing else but to believe ourselves to be wise, when we are not; and to fancy that we know what we do not know. In effect, no body knows death; no body can tell, but it may be the greatest benefit of mankind; and yet men are afraid of it, as if they knew certainly that it were the greatest of evils."
Plato, Apology
“Its fury aims to shatter but our altars:
It scorns only the gods and never the mortals.”
Sa fureur ne va qu'à briser nos autels,
Elle n'en veut qu'aux dieux, et non pas aux mortels.
Stratonice, act I, scene iii
Referring to the early Christian church.
Polyeucte (1642)