Gregory Maguire Quotes

Where there is no Jesus, evil always reigns.

When anything is in the presence of evil, but is not as yet evil, the presence of good arouses the desire of good in that thing; but the presence of evil, which makes a thing evil, takes away the desire and friendship of the good; for that which was once both good and evil has now become evil only, and the good has no friendship with evil.

Wickedness never did, never does, never will bring us happiness.

The chief beginning of evil is goodness in excess.

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.

Since boredom advances and boredom is the root of all evil, no wonder, then, that the world goes backwards, that evil spreads. This can be traced back to the very beginning of the world. The gods were bored; therefore they created human beings.

Let us confess it: evil strides the world.

Good and evil exists everywhere.

What is bad? All that proceeds from weakness

Increasing meaning and joy on the planet is the ultimate goal because within that space all evil is cast out.

All badness is spoiled goodness. A bad apple is a good apple that became rotten. Because evil has no capital of its own, it is a parasite that feeds on goodness.

God may have created the world in six days, but while he was resting on the seventh, Beelzebub popped up and did this place.

The world is a den of thieves, and night is falling. Evil breaks its chains and runs through the world like a mad dog. The poison affects us all. No one escapes. Therefore let us be happy while we are happy. Let us be kind, generous, affectionate and good. It is necessary and not at all shameful to take pleasure in the little world.

Why, do you not know, then, that the origin of all human evils, and of baseness, and cowardice, is not death, but rather the fear of death?

You could say that evil is contagious in that we have this mesmerizing mentor in Uncle Charlie who comes into your life. Every person has a seed of evil inside them, and when you come across such a mesmerizing mentor, he is able to successfully turn it into a flower of evil.

For nothing is evil in the beginning.

Even when the faith goes away, there's that space where you crave something bigger than yourself. For me, that's kind of where art came in, after that.

Good, as it ripens, becomes continually more different not only from evil but from other good.

I challenge anyone to tell me that there isn’t evil in this world. From the days of Cain and Abel we know all too well there will always be evil. But that evil shouldn’t take away our freedoms. In fact, the only way to defeat evil is by taking advantage of our freedoms.

In innocence there is no strength against evil, said Sparrowhawk, a little wryly. But there is strength in it for good.

Sure the world breeds monsters, but kindness grows just as wild.

But if God is gone and man is no longer master, then who is master?

Goodness that comes out of hiding and assumes a public role is no longer good, but corrupt in its own terms and will carry its own corruption wherever it goes.

It's despair at the lack of feeling, of love, of reason in the world. It's despair that anyone can even contemplate the idea of dropping a bomb or ordering that it should be dropped. It's despair that so few of us care. It's despair that there's so much brutality and callousness in the world. It's despair that perfectly normal young men can be made vicious and evil because they've won a lot of money. And then do what you've done to me.