Evil

It is when iniquity is purged by free grace that men practically depart from evil.
~ William Arnot, Laws from Heaven for Life on Earth (1873 edition). LXXXIX. Mercy and Truth

Yet the evil still increased, and, like the parasite of barnacles on a ship, if it did not destroy the structure, it obstructed its fair, comfortable progress in the path of life.
~ William Banting, Letter On Corpulence, Addressed to the Public. Fourth Edition (1869).

Those people who doubt there is evil in the world need to travel a few weeks with me on the drug circuit.
~ William John Bennett, in First Things (December 1990). Drugs and the Face of Evil

There can be no Good Will. Will is always Evil; it is persecution to others or selfishness.
~ William Blake, from Annotations to Swedenborg's 'Divine Love and Divine Wisdom' (1788).

Like the brief doomed flare of exploding suns that registers dimly on blind men's eyes, the beginning of the horror passed almost unnoticed; in the shriek of what followed, in fact, was forgotten and perhaps not connected to the horror at all. It was difficult to judge.
~ William Peter Blatty, The Exorcist (1971 novel).

The face of "evil" is always the face of total need.
~ William S. Burroughs, The Naked Lunch (1959). Introduction, Deposition: Testimony Concerning a Sickness

[Y]oung monsters generally grow up to be old monsters, bearing the marks of their pleasures on their faces.
~ William S. ("Billy") Burroughs, Jr., in Cursed from Birth: The Short, Unhappy Life of William S. Burroughs, Jr. (2006).

Even in evil, that dark cloud which hangs over the creation, we discern rays of light and hope, and gradually come to see, in suffering and temptation, proofs and instruments of the sublimest purposes of Wisdom and Love.
~ William Ellery Channing (D.D.), Discourse At The Ordination Of The Rev. F.A. Farley, Providence RI (1828). Likeness to God

One of the tremendous evils of the world is the monstrous accumulation of power in a few hands.
~ William Ellery Channing (D.D.), from The Works of William E. Channing, D.D., Volume I (1841). Introductory Remarks (April 18th, 1841)

The tenderness, that apologizes for wickedness, is among the worst forms of cruelty.
~ William Ellery Channing (D.D.), in The Perfect Life: In Twelve Discourses (1873). III. The Universal Father

Another great evil arising from this desire to be thought rich; or rather, from the desire not to be thought poor, is the destructive thing which has been honored by the name of "speculation"; but which ought to be called Gambling.
~ William Cobbett, Advice to Young Men: And (Incidentally) to Young Women in the Middle and Higher Ranks of Life (1829). Letter II: To A Young Man

I do not much like weasels; but I hate rats; and, therefore, I say, success to the weasels.
~ William Cobbett, Rural Rides (1830). From Salibury to Highworth

In our time all it takes for evil to flourish is for a few good men to be a little wrong and have a great deal of power, and for the vast majority of their fellow citizens to remain indifferent.
~ Rev. William Sloane Coffin, Jr., in the Yale Alumni magazine (1967).

We think that to do evil in the world we have to be some kind of a Bengal tiger, when in fact it's enough to be a tame tabby.
~ Rev. William Sloane Coffin, Jr., in The Collected Sermons Of William Sloane Coffin: The Riverside Years, Volume 1 (2008). We Know Not What We Do (March 7, 1982)

All constraint,
Except what wisdom lays on evil men,
Is evil.
~ William Cowper, The Task (1785). Book V. The Winter Morning Walk

[E]very thing that is usually understood by the term cooperation, is, in some degree, an evil.
~ William Godwin, An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793). Book VIII: Of Property

I must say that anyone who moved through those years without understanding that man produces evil as a bee produces honey, must have been blind or wrong in the head.
~ William Golding, in The Hot Gates (1965). Fable

Through his demonic influences, he does succeed in turning many away from true faith; but we can still say that his evil activities are countered for the people of God by his ministering spirits, the holy ones of the angelic order. They are vigorous in delivering the heirs of salvation from the strategems of evil men.
~ Billy Graham, Angels: God's Secret Agents (1975). Nearer Than You Think

Transcendental meditation is evil because when you are meditating, it opens space within you for the devil to enter.
~ Billy Graham, in Ms. Magazine (1977).

The origin and meaning of evil, its whence and its why, has always been the crux of the sincerest and profoundest thinkers -- the insoluble problem of humanity.
~ William Rathbone (W.R.) Greg, Enigmas of Life (1872). Preface

Death is the greatest evil; because it cuts off hope.
~ William Hazlitt, Characteristics: in the Manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims (1823).

Never anticipate evils; or, because you cannot have things exactly as you wish, make them out worse than they are, through mere spite and willfulness.
~ William Hazlitt, Table-talk; Or, Original Essays, Volume II (1825 edition). On The Conduct Of Life; or, Advice to a School-Boy (1822 essay)

Vice, like disease, floats in the atmosphere.
~ William Hazlitt, Characteristics: in the Manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims (1823).

If it were possible to make an accurate calculation of the evils which police regulations occasion, and of those which they prevent, the number of the former would, in all cases, exceed that of the latter.
~ Wilhelm von Humboldt, The Limits of State Action (1791). Chapter 8

Evil is a disease; and worry over disease is itself an additional form of disease, which only adds to the original complaint.
~ William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902). Lectures VI and VII: The Sick Soul

For life is evil. Two souls are in my breast; I see the better, and in the very act of seeing it I do the worse.
~ William James, published in The Atlantic Monthly (July 1920). Familiar Letters of William James: To Shadworth Hodgson (30 December 1885).

Much of what we call evil is due entirely to the way men take the phenomenon. It can so often be converted into a bracing and tonic good by a simple change of the sufferer's inner attitude from one of fear to one of fight.
~ William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902). Lectures IV and V: The Religion of Healthy-Mindedness

The world is all the richer for having a devil in it, so long as we keep our foot upon his neck.
~ William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902). Lecture II: Circumscription of the Topic

All the evils of the day, the slackness of trade, falling prices, declining revenue, poverty of the people, want of employment, political discontent, bankruptcy, and panic, have been attributed to the want of money ...
~ William (W.) Stanley Jevons, Money and the Mechanism of Exchange (1875). Chapter XXVI -- The Quantity of Money Needed by a Nation

With right knowledge, or at any rate with a confident conviction that our neighbors will no more work to hurt us than we would think of harming them, the two-thirds of the World's evil would vanish into thin air.
~ William Q. Judge, The Ocean of Theosophy (1893). Chapter XI: Karma

There is no explanation for evil. It must be looked upon as a necessary part of the order of the universe. To ignore it is childish; to bewail it senseless.
~ W. Somerset Maugham, The Summing Up (1938). Chapter 73

Evil men have no songs.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Evil cannot be "treated" -- nor should it be. Evil has to [be] confronted and destroyed and it matters not why the evil is in play. Society has no obligation to try to rehabilitate evil.
~ Bill O'Reilly, in WorldNetDaily (12 September 2001). Evil on display

Of the origin of evil, no universal solution has been discovered.
~ William Paley, Natural Theology: or, Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity (1802). Chapter XXVI: The Goodness of the Deity

Covetousness is the greatest of monsters, as well as the root of all evil.
~ William Penn, Some Fruits of Solitude (1693). Part I. Avarice

God is better served in resisting a Temptation to Evil, than in many formal Prayers.
~ William Penn, Some Fruits of Solitude (1693). Part I. Religion

Nothing but evil can flow from an evil heart.
~ William Romaine, A Method For Preventing The Frequency Of Robberies And Murders (1754).

By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.
~ William Shakespeare, Macbeth. Act IV, scene i

I go, and it is done; the bell invites me.
Hear it not, Duncan, for it is a knell
That summons thee to heaven or to hell.
~ William Shakespeare, Macbeth. Act II, scene i

Ill deeds are doubled with an evil word.
~ William Shakespeare, The Comedy of Errors. Act III, scene ii

Love is a familiar; Love is a devil:
there is no evil angel but Love.
~ William Shakespeare, Love's Labour's Lost. Act I, scene ii

No man means evil but the devil, and we shall know him by his horns.
~ William Shakespeare, The Merry Wives of Windsor. Act V, scene ii

O conspiracy,
Sham'st thou to show thy dang'rous brow by night,
When evils are most free?
~ William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar. Act II, scene i

The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones.
~ William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar. Act III, scene ii

'Tis better to be vile than vile esteemed,
When not to be receives reproach of being.
~ William Shakespeare, Sonnet 121

Wisdom and goodness to the vile seem vile;
Filths savour but themselves.
~ William Shakespeare, King Lear. Act IV, scene ii

If you want to drive the devil out of the world, hit him with a cradle instead of a crutch.
~ William A. "Billy" Sunday

Temptation is the devil looking through the keyhole. Yielding is opening the door and inviting him in.
~ William A. "Billy" Sunday

Revenge may be wicked, but it's natural.
~ William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair: A Novel without a Hero (1848). Chapter II. In Which Miss Sharp and Miss Sedley Prepare to Open the Campaign

The most perplexing form of evil, and especially so for all idealists, is that kind of evil which comes out of our efforts to do good. Perhaps when we try to do good without love, we create evil.
~ William Irwin Thompson, Evil and World Order (1976).

The devil is a better theologian than any of us and is a devil still.
~ Aiden Wilson (A.W.) Tozer, Man: The Dwelling Place of God (1966).

[S]o enormous, so dreadful, so irremediable did its wickedness appear that my own mind was completely made up for the abolition. A trade founded in iniquity, and carried on as this was, must be abolished, let the policy be what it might, -- let the consequences be what they would, I from this time determined that I would never rest till I had effected its abolition.
~ William Wilberforce (on the abolition of slavery), Speech, House of Commons (12 May 1789).

The devil is only a convenient myth invented by the real malefactors of our world.
~ Robert Anton Wilson

And all seems evil until I
Sleepless would lie down and die.
~ William Butler Yeats, from Last Poems (1938-39). The Man and the Echo

Evil comes to all us men of imagination wearing as its mask all the virtues.
~ William Butler Yeats, from Autobiographies: Reveries Over Childhood and Youth (1926).

We are Americans. We have been through the fire before. You are not an enemy combatant -- you are a terrorist. You are not a soldier in any war -- you are a terrorist.
~ (U.S. District Court Judge) William G. Young (while sentencng Richard C. Reid to life in prison), The Washington Post (31 January 2003). Would-Be Shoe Bomber Gets Life Term