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Topics/Morality

Quotes about good and evil

192 quotes from 117 people

Most readBy personPage 11 of 13

By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.
William Shakespeare1564–1616Macbeth (c. 1606), Act IV, Scene I, spoken by Second WitchIn context
Out, damned spot! out, I say! One; two. Why, then ’tis time to do’t. Hell is murky! Fie, my lord, fie! a soldier, and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account? Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?
William Shakespeare1564–1616Macbeth (c. 1606), Act V, Scene I, spoken by Lady MacbethIn context
The prince of darkness is a gentleman
William Shakespeare1564–1616King Lear (c. 1606), Act III, Scene IV, spoken by EdgarIn context
Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them,
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Caesar.
William Shakespeare1564–1616Julius Caesar (1599), Act III, Scene II, spoken by AntonyIn context
- Life & Death
Hell is empty,
And all the devils are here.
William Shakespeare1564–1616The Tempest (c. 1611), Act I, Scene II, spoken by ArielIn context
The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.
An evil soul producing holy witness
Is like a villain with a smiling cheek,
A goodly apple rotten at the heart.
O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!
William Shakespeare1564–1616The Merchant of Venice (c. 1597), Act I, Scene III, spoken by AntonioIn context
- Truth & Lies
How far that little candle throws his beams!
So shines a good deed in a naughty world.
William Shakespeare1564–1616The Merchant of Venice (c. 1597), Act V, Scene I, spoken by PortiaIn context
- Virtue
Anything that’s mended is but patched; virtue that transgresses is but patched with sin, and sin that amends is but patched with virtue.
William Shakespeare1564–1616Twelfth Night (c. 1601), Act I, Scene V, spoken by ClownIn context
- Virtue
And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover
To entertain these fair well-spoken days,
I am determined to prove a villain
William Shakespeare1564–1616Richard III (c. 1593), Act I, Scene I, spoken by RichardIn context
- Love
And thus I clothe my naked villany
With odd old ends stol’n forth of Holy Writ,
And seem a saint when most I play the devil.
William Shakespeare1564–1616Richard III (c. 1593), Act I, Scene III, spoken by RichardIn context
- Religion
Abashed the Devil stood,
And felt how awful goodness is, and saw
Virtue in her shape how lovely
John Milton1608–1674Paradise Lost (1667), Book IVIn context
- Virtue
Time drives everything before it, and is able to bring with it good as well as evil, and evil as well as good.
Niccolò Machiavelli1469–1527The Prince (1532), Chapter IIIIn context
- Time
When the stars threw down their spears,
And water’d heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
William Blake1757–1827The Tyger (1794)In context
- God
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
W. B. Yeats1865–1939The Second Coming (1920)In context
- Character
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
W. B. Yeats1865–1939The Second Coming (1920)In context
- Religion