For perfect evil always wins something akin to admiration from more common people.
~
Gunman's Reckoning
by
Max Brand
Why do they always teach us that it's easy and evil to do what we want and that we need discipline to restrain ourselves? It's the hardest thing in the world—to do what we want. And it takes the greatest kind of courage. I mean, what we really want.
~
The Fountainhead
by
Ayn Rand
"Money, you think, is the sole motive to pains and hazard, deception and deviltry, in this world. How much money did the devil make by gulling Eve?"
~
The Confidence-Man
by
Herman Melville
It stands to reason that he who would cure a moral ailment must be practically acquainted with it in all its bearings.
~
Erewhon
by
Samuel Butler
It has been said that the love of money is the root of all evil. The want of money is so quite as truly.
~
Erewhon
by
Samuel Butler
"But recollect from this time that all good things perverted to evil purposes, are worse than those which are naturally bad. A thoroughly wicked woman, is wicked indeed. When religion goes wrong, she is very wrong, for the same reason."
~
Barnaby Rudge
by
Charles Dickens
"There is no such thing as unmixed evil. A man who loses his money gains, at least, experience, and sometimes something better."
~
The Young Duke
by
Benjamin Disraeli
"There are worse evils than war."
~
The Virginian
by
Owen Wister
Many an act that man does is right or wrong according to the time and place which form, so to speak, its context; strip it of its surrounding circumstances, and you tear away its meaning. Gentlemen reformers, beware of this common practice of yours! beware of calling an act evil on Tuesday because that same act was evil on Monday!
~
The Virginian
by
Owen Wister
The best men are not consistent in good--why should the worst men be consistent in evil?
~
The Woman in White
by
Wilkie Collins