Umberto Eco Quotes

Is it not enough to know the evil to shun it? If not, we should be sincere enough to admit that we love evil too well to give it up.

A portion of mankind take pride in their vices and pursue their purpose; many more waver between doing what is right and complying with what is wrong.

The soul may be compared to a field of battle, where the armies are ready every moment to encounter. Not a single vice but has a more powerful opponent, and not one virtue but may be overborne by a combination of vices.

Temptation is a suggested short cut to the realization of the highest at which I aim - not towards what I understand as evil, but towards what I understand as good.

Virtues are often conquered by vices, but their rout is most complete when it is inflicted by other virtues, more militant, more efficient, or more congenial.

Being against evil doesn't make you good. Tonight I was against it and then I was evil myself. I could feel it coming just like a tide... I just want to destroy them. But when you start taking pleasure in it you are awfully close to the thing you're fighting.

Virtue that transgresses is but patched with sin; and sin that amends is but patched with virtue.

Hard to say what's right when all I wanna do is wrong.

Look now — in all of history men have been taught that killing of men is an evil thing not to be countenanced. Any man who kills must be destroyed because this is a great sin, maybe the worst sin we know. And then we take a soldier and put murder in his hands and we say to him, 'Use it well, use it wisely.' We put no checks on him. Go out and kill as many of a certain kind or classification of your brothers as you can. And we will reward you for it because it is a violation of your early training.

I felt it was my duty to praise all of God's works with fervent enthusiasm. At the same time I killed flies in my house in a spirit of hatred, exasperation and contempt. My praise to God for all his works was dishonest, the act of killing the fly was honest.

The sin that now rises to memory as your bosom sin, let this first of all be withstood and mastered. Oppose it instantly by a detestation of it, by a firm will to conquer it, by reflection, by reason, and by prayer.

Goodness that preaches undoes itself.

The love of property and consciousness of right and wrong have conflicting places in our organization, which often makes a man's course seem crooked, his conduct a riddle.

And now, when I have summed up all my store, Thinking (so I myself deceive) So rich a chaplet thence to weave As never yet the King of Glory wore, Alas! I find the serpent old, That, twining in his speckled breast, About the flowers disguised does fold With wreaths of fame and interest.

I had always thought that the 'good,' and the 'bad' and the 'violent' did not exist in any absolute, essential sense. It seemed to me interesting to demystify these adjectives in the setting of a Western. An assassin can display a sublime altruism while a good man can kill with total indifference.

This is pity,” he thought, and then he lifted his head in wonder. He thought that there must be something terribly wrong with a world in which this monstrous feeling is called a virtue.

During the course of our life we now and then enjoy some pleasures so inviting, and have some encounters of so tender a nature, that though they are forbidden, it is but natural to wish that they were at least allowable. Nothing can be more delightful, except it be to abandon them for virtue's sake.

So now the devil's in my soul.

Evil into the mind of god or man may come and go, so unapproved, and leave no spot or blame behind.

I asked a thief to steal me a peach: He turned up his eyes. I asked a lithe lady to lie her down: Holy and meek, she cries. As soon as I went An angel came. He winked at the thief And smiled at the dame- And without one word spoke Had a peach from the tree, And 'twixt earnest and joke Enjoyed the lady.

Party spirit enlists a man's virtues in the cause of his vices.

People with the purest souls are capable of the greatest evils.

Conscience whispers, but interest screams aloud.

Knowing that something is wrong and doing it anyway happens very often in life, and I doubt I will ever know why.

There is probably no one, however rigid his virtue, who is not liable to find himself, by the complexity of circumstances, living at close quarters with the very vice which he himself has been most outspoken in condemning -- without altogether recognizing it beneath the disguise of ambiguous behavior which it assumes in his presence.