Charles Caleb Colton Quotes

It is widely assumed, contrary to fact, that theism necessarily involves the two assumptions which cannot be squared with the existence of so much suffering, and that therefore, per impossibile, they simply have to be squared with the existence of all this suffering, somehow.

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

No one who is in this world will deny that evils exist. What, then, do we say? That evil is not a living and animated substance, but a condition of the soul which is opposed to virtue and which springs up In the slothful because of their falling away from good.

Good girls go to heaven, bad girls go everywhere.

Evil is done without effort, naturally, it is the working of fate; good is always the product of an art.

Heaven takes care that no man secures happiness by crime.

Every evil is a sickness of soul, but virtue offers the cause of its health.

Some people turn from God because they cannot understand how a good God can permit evil in the world.

God judged it better to bring good out of evil than to suffer no evil to exist.

He that does good for good's sake seeks neither paradise nor reward, but he is sure of both in the end.

No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death.

Happiness is a great power of holiness. Thus, kind words, by their power of producing happiness, have also a power of producing holiness, and so of winning men to God.

If there was no moral evil upon earth, there would be no physical evil.

Atheism is really nothing but a sorry litany of non-sequiturs, e.g., if God existed, why do we have all the evil and horrors in the world? But this presupposes that God is all-good, an obvious non-sequitur.

God dislikes evil, and no happiness can be built on hate. Love one another as brothers.

The secular law has as its task not to turn the world lying in evil into the Kingdom of God, but to prevent it from turning into hell.

Evil, by definition, is that which endangers the good, and the good is that which we perceive as a value.

…we ought to be no less persuaded that the propitious smiles of Heaven, can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right, which Heaven itself has ordained.

No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death. He and his are not neglected by the gods.

There's nothing simple when you're in this 'Good Place.'

Being good or evil has nothing to do with religion.

The memory of the just survives in Heaven.

And Heaven, that every virtue bears in mind, E'en to the ashes of the just is kind.

There is yet something remaining for the dead, and some far better thing for the good than for the evil.

I have been there, and still would go; 'T is like a little heaven below.