Elias Hicks Quotes

But what is the greatest evil? If you are going to epitomize evil, what is it? Is it the bomb? The greatest evil that one has to fight constantly, every minute of the day until one dies, is the worse part of oneself.

When a man is a prey to his emotions, he is not his own master, but lies at the mercy of fortune: so much so, that he is often compelled, while seeing that which is better for him, to follow that which is worse.

A man vows, and yet will not east away the means of breaking his vow. Is it that he distinctly means to break it? Not at all; but the desires which tend to break it are at work in him dimly, and make their way into his imagination, and relax his muscles in the very moments when he is telling himself over again the reasons for his vow.

Your enemy is your own self in a different uniform.

We all invite our own devils, and we must exorcise our own.

I have had more trouble with myself than with any other man.

Beware of no man more than of yourself; we carry our worst enemies within us.

It is a man's own mind, not his enemy or foe, that lures him to evil ways.

We may not have demon fathers dangling offers of infernal power before us, but everyone understands what it means to struggle with temptation or resist the urge to give in to our baser natures.

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.

Ambition is the Subtlest Beast of the Intellectual and Moral Field. It is wonderfully adroit in concealing itself from its owner.

I sometimes give myself admirable advice, but I am incapable of taking it.

My favorite Swamp Thing stories have always been about a man wrestling with monsters both internal and external.

No one is above temptation. No one is above life in general.

Everybody has a sinful nature pulling them at every turn.

Oh, I am an angel, though sometimes I wish I was more of a devil.

Right is what you should do, wrong is what you really want to do.

I always revisit duality because I think it's a conflict we all have. I think we all leave our house and go to work, and we put on the cape and become superheroes. That's what we do. It's how we move through life and handle negativity: you do everything you can to stay away from it.

God is in my head, but the devil is in my pants.

Let us never forget that our chief danger is from within. The world and the devil combined, cannot do us as much harm as our own hearts will, if we do not watch and pray.

Is the human condition not defined by an endless struggle to control the ego's subterfuges?

Men wish to be saved from the mischiefs of their vices, but not from their vices.

There is evil in all of us, and it is the mark of a man how he defies the evil within.

It's just a feeling I have. What you see with your eyes is not necessarily real. My enemy is, among other things, the me inside me.

Nobody makes me do anything I don't want to do. It's my decision. So the biggest devil is me. I'm either my best friend or my worst enemy.