Good & Evil
It is better to believe that people possess good qualities than to assert that they do not.
True goodness springs from a man's own heart. All men are born good.
Good is all that serves life, evil is all that serves death. Good is reverence for life .. and all that enhances life. Evil is all that stifles life, narrows it down, cuts it to pieces.
There is nothing truly good and beneficial unto man, but what makes him just, temperate, courageous, liberal.
What belongs by nature to the superior man are benevolence, righteousness, propriety, and knowledge.
Humility, liberality, chastity, meekness, temperance, brotherly love, and diligence.
Prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance.
Wisdom, compassion, and courage.
The gods can either take away evil from the world and will not, or, being willing to do so cannot, or they neither can nor will, or lastly, they are able and willing. If they have the will to remove evil and cannot, then they are not omnipotent. If they can but will not, then they are not benevolent. If they are neither able nor willing; they are neither omnipotent nor benevolent. Lastly, if they are both able and willing to annihilate evil, why does it exist?
Evil can no more be charged upon God than darkness can be charged on the sun.
No one can be redeemed by another. No God and no saint is able to shield a man from the consequences of his evil doings. Every one of us must become our own redeemer.
The sad truth is that the most evil is done by people who have never made up their minds to be either good or evil.
The evil life is really the thoughtless life.
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious convictions.
Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good.
Pride, covetousness, lust, anger, gluttony, envy and sloth are the seven capital sins.
Five great enemies to peace inhabit within us: avarice, ambition, envy, anger, and pride.
Despair, resisting the known truth, envy of another's spiritual good.
Say to yourself at daybreak: I shall come across the busybody, the thankless, the overbearing, the treacherous, the envious, the un-neighborly. All this has befallen them because they know not good from evil.
Power corrupts the few, but weakness corrupts the many.
The Sixth Patriarch while talking to the elder Wei Ming said: "Perhaps you should concentrate your thoughts for a moment and avoid thinking in terms of good and evil."
If a person asks something that is evil, do not tell him. If he wants to tell something evil, do not ask. If he speaks about evil, do not listen. If he wishes to quarrel, do not have discourse with him.
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