Nathaniel Hawthorne Quotes

The suspicious mind believes more than it doubts. It believes in a formidable and ineradicable evil lurking in every person.

We are all born marked for evil.

Evil does not grow out of the soil, nor does mischief spring from the ground. Only man is born to do mischief, just as sparks fly upward.

Evil looks like you and I. I know what evil looks like, and I know that it comes in all shades and colors.

I know there’s evil in the world, and there always has been. But you don’t need to believe in Satan or demons to explain it. Human beings are perfectly capable of evil all by themselves.

Mankind are an incorrigible race. Give them but bugbears and idols -- it is all that they ask; the distinctions of right and wrong, of truth and falsehood, of good and evil, are worse than indifferent to them.

The rose is born evil ... but it is pink.

Man's nature is evil; goodness is the result of conscious activity.

The evil implanted in man by nature spreads so imperceptibly, when the habit of wrong-doing is unchecked, that he himself can set no limit to his shamelessness.

Depending upon one another's hearts, ye had still hoped that virtue were not all a dream. Now are ye undeceived. Evil is the nature of mankind.

...she is too beautiful, I think, to not be inherently evil.

There is a mixture of evil in everything we do; indulgence encourages us to encroach, while we Crabbe exercise the rights of children, we become childish.

I think the human race needs to think about killing. How much evil must we do to do good?

There's no way to explain to a child that the line between good and evil isn't nearly as black and white as a fairy tale would lead you to believe. That an ordinary person can turn into a villain, under the right circumstances. That sometimes we dragon slayers do things we aren't proud of.

The devil is an optimist if he thinks he can make people worse than they are.

We were by nature children of wrath, even as others.

Of all evil I deem you capable: therefore I want the good from you.

You had evil inside you, and you indulged it. Men will always indulge it.

It is in our hearts that evil lies, and it is from our hearts that it must be plucked out.

She's so small, yet she contains so much evil.

Adults are just children sometimes. But evil, hurt children.

She believed, and was entitled to believe, I must say, that all human beings were evil by nature, whether tormentors or victims, or idle standers-by. They could only create meaningless tragedies, she said, since they weren't nearly intelligent enough to accomplish all the good they were meant to do.

There is nothing evil but what is within us; the rest is either natural or accidental.

If I now recognize evil in other people, is it not because I have become evil too?

Deliver me, O Lord, from that evil man, myself.