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C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.

Wickedness

Oh, how cowardly is wickedness always!

Statius.

Peace and wickedness are far asunder.

Stillingfleet.

The world loves a spice of wickedness.

Longfellow.

For never, never wicked man was wise.

Pope.

Wickedness may prosper for a while.

L’Estrange.

No wickedness has any ground of reason.

Livy.

The majority is wicked.

Bias.

Do not be deceived; happiness and enjoyment do not lie in wicked ways.

Dr. Watts.

Wickedness is a kind of voluntary frenzy, and a chosen distraction.

Tillotson.

The happiness of the wicked passes away like a torrent.

Racine.

I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.

Swift.

Few are so wicked as to take delight in crimes unprofitable.

Dryden.

What rein can hold licentious wickedness, when down the hill he holds his fierce career?

Shakespeare.

The wickedness of the few makes the calamity of the many.

Publius Syrus.

There’s a method in man’s wickedness; it grows up by degrees.

Beaumont and Fletcher.

It is no sin to be tempted; the wickedness lies in being overcome.

Balzac.

’Cause I’se wicked,—I is. I’s mighty wicked, anyhow, I can’t help it.

Harriet Beecher Stowe.

They that plough iniquity and sow wickedness reap the same.

Bible.

  • Destroy his fib, or sophistry—in vain!
  • The creature’s at his dirty work again.
  • Pope.

    Was ever any wicked man free from the stings of a guilty conscience?

    Tillotson.

  • Are you call’d forth from out a world of men,
  • To slay the innocent?
  • Shakespeare.

    Mental stains cannot be removed by time, nor washed away by any waters.

    Cicero.

    The disposition to do a bad deed is the most terrible punishment of the deed it does.

    Charles Mildway.

    To see and listen to the wicked is already the beginning of wickedness.

    Confucius.

    Wickedness resides in the very hesitation about an act, even though it be not perpetrated.

    Cicero.

    Great God, have pity on the wicked, for thou didst everything for the good, when thou madest them good!

    Saadi.

    We can never be grieved for their miseries who are thoroughly wicked, and have thereby justly called their calamities on themselves.

    Dryden.

    It is a statistical fact that the wicked work harder to reach hell than the righteous do to enter heaven.

    H. W. Shaw.

    Hint at the existence of wickedness in a light, easy, and agreeable manner, so that nobody’s fine feelings may be offended.

    Thackeray.

    The sure way to wickedness is always through wickedness.

    Seneca.

    If the wicked flourish, and thou suffer, be not discouraged; they are fatted for destruction, thou are dieted for health.

    Fuller.

    Wickedness is a wonderfully diligent architect of misery, of shame, accompanied with terror, and commotion, and remorse, and endless perturbation.

    Plutarch.

    Doubtless the world is wicked enough; but it will not be improved by the extension of a spirit which self-righteously sees more to reform outside of itself than in itself.

    J. G. Holland.

    Wickedness may well be compared to a bottomless pit, into which it is easier to keep one’s self from falling, then, being fallen, to give one’s self any stay from falling infinitely.

    Sir P. Sidney.

    There is no man suddenly either excellently good or extremely wicked; but grows so, either as he holds himself up in virtue, or lets himself slide to viciousness.

    Sir P. Sidney.

    God has sometimes converted wickedness into madness; and it is to the credit of human reason that men who are not in some degree mad are never capable of being in the highest degree wicked.

    Burke.