Colum McCann Quotes

The struggle for morality never stays won. It's always in process.

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.

Terrible is the temptation to be good.

Any man who tries to be good all the time is bound to come to ruin among the great number who are not good.

Everyone spends their lives trying to balance their world between good and evil.

The eternal conflict of good and the best with bad and the worst is on.

There has to be evil so that good can prove its purity above it.

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.

Evil is always possible. Goodness is a difficulty.

I do all the evil I can before I learn to shun it? 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.

Being against evil doesn't make you good.

No government or social system is so evil that its people must be considered as lacking in virtue.

Our actions are neither so good nor so evil as our impulses.

There is good and evil in each of us, and you can easily be led to the dark side.

Temptation can be defined as an inducement to do evil. Three powerful forces work together to ruin a believer's character and witness: Satan, the world system, and our own lustful "flesh" tendencies.

The more conscious I was of goodness and of all that was 'sublime and beautiful,'the more deeply I sank into my mire and the more ready I was to sink in it altogether.

True conviction of sin--how difficult it is, when its appearances and modes of life are so fair, when it twines itself so cunningly about, or creeps so insidiously into, our amiable qualities, and sets off its internal disorders by so many outward charms and attractions.

Of the good in you I can speak, but not of the evil. For what is evil but good tortured by its own hunger and thirst? Verily when good is hungry it seeks food even in dark caves, and when it thirsts it drinks even of dead waters.

Only evil grows of itself, while for goodness we want effort and courage.

You know how confusing the whole good-evil concept is for me.

The way to overcome evil is to love something that is good.

Everybody's got some sin, but if it troubles your heart you're a gentle sinner, just a good soul gone wrong.

I've got a terrible person in me just as much as anybody else, and I think - I like to think I also have a really good person in me.

This is not going to be easy. I'm good at being bad, but I'm bad at being good. I don't know the first thing about good deeds.

There is indeed good and there is indeed evil, and both walk the earth. But good has little to do with the forms of religion, and evil has as little to do with so much behavior condemned by religion. Both good and evil vie for the passions of the heart. For love!