Lew Wallace Quotes

Wrong people are wrong not because of their faults but because of their presumed virtues.

The men whose manhood you have broken will loathe you, and will always be brooding and scheming to strike a fresh blow.

If the other person injures you, you may forget the injury; but if you injure him you will always remember.

You can wipe out your opponents. But if you do it unjustly you become eligible for being wiped out yourself.

Hypocrisy is not generally a social sin, but a virtue.

We used to sit around and chortle, 'Look what this guy said five years ago, and today look what he's doing. Let's stick it to him!' It's as simple as that, I swear.

People who treat other people as less than human must not be surprised when the bread they have cast on the waters comes floating back to them, poisoned.

The injuries we do and those we suffer are seldom weighed in the same scales.

He that studieth revenge keepeth his own wounds green, which otherwise would heal and do well.

The day of reckoning came, and that day was the Terror. The heirs of those who toiled made their account with the heirs of those who played.

He who justifies the wicked, and he who condemns the just, both of them are abomination …

Be more severe to ideas than to actions; do not over look the strength of the bad cause or the weakness of the good.

The rankest form of hypocrisy. Laws that are good enough for everybody else ought to be good enough for us.

It may not have been fair, but it changed history.

I feel like getting even, and if I live long enough I will.

All standards are double standards.

There's something in people's character, particularly the British character, about unfairness. They don't like it.

A great deal; you are good to those who are good to you. It is all I ever desire to be. If people were always kind and obedient to those who are cruel and unjust, the wicked people would have it all their own way; they would never feel afraid, and so they would never alter, but would grow worse and worse. When we are struck at without a reason, we should strike back again very hard; I am sure we should - so hard as to teach the person who struck us never to do it again.

I loathe your ideals because I know no worse injustice than the giving of the undeserved.

The most worthless of mankind are not afraid to condemn in others the same disorders which they allow in themselves; and can readily discover some nice difference in age, character, or station, to justify the partial distinction.

Revenge feels right only to those directly involved. Justice feels right even to outsiders.

Treat all fairly or they will seek revenge.

No weapon has ever settled a moral problem. It can impose a solution but it cannot guarantee it to be a just one. You can wipe out your opponents. But if you do it unjustly you become eligible for being wiped out yourself.

People are either attracted to the unseemly or disapproving of it, or both; yet we try to sound superior to the unseemly by pretending to be amused by it or indifferent to it.

One must repay good and ill; but why just to the person who did us good or ill?