Zadie Smith Quotes

All the lessons of history in four sentences: Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad with power. The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly small. The bee fertilizes the flower it robs. When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.

When the gods wish to punish us they answer our prayers.

If any man err from the right way, it is his own misfortune, no injury to thee; nor therefore art thou to punish him in the things of this life because thou supposest he will be miserable in that which is to come.

Anybody that has had a brush with what feels like undiluted evil often ends up asking themselves the same questions - whether it's something that was a consequence of their own actions or actions that were taken against them or actions that they were caught up in.

God warns before he wounds.

Those whom God wishes to destroy he drives mad.

Traitors hoist by their own petard?--or victims of the gods?--we shall never know!

God has punished the knave, and the devil has drowned the rest.

It is, therefore, not proper for God thus to pass over sin unpunished.

Here in St. Cloud’s,” Dr. Larch wrote, “ I have been given the choice of playing God or leaving practically everything up to chance. It is my experience that practically everything is left up to chance much of the time; men who believe in good and evil, and who believe that good should win, should watch for those moments when it is possible to play God – we should seize those moments. There won’t be may

If you had not committed great sins, God would not have sent a punishment like me upon you.

Poverty, disease, sorrow, imprisonment and other evils are the fruits borne by the tree of one's own sins.

For misery don't blame God. He gives the food but we cook it.

For they imagined as they wished--that it was a wild shot,/ an unintended killing--fools, not to comprehend/ they were already in the grip of death./ But glaring under his brows Odysseus answered: 'You yellow dogs, you thought I'd never make it/ home from the land of Troy. You took my house to plunder,/ twisted my maids to serve your beds. You dared/ bid for my wife while I was still alive./ Contempt was all you had for the gods who rule wide heaven,/ contempt for what men say of you hereafter./ Your last hour has come. You die in blood.

Evil gains work their punishment.

On wrongs swift vengeance waits.

If you don't do your part, don't blame God.

Everyone will experience the consequences of his own acts. If his act are right, he'll get good consequences; if they're not, he'll suffer for it.

We are punished by our sins, not for them.

It's motive alone which gives character to the actions of men.

Every guilty person is his own hangman.

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

You know that saying, bad things don't happen to good people? That's a lie.

Never pray for justice, because you might get some.

Men are not punished for their sins, but by them.