“This is not going to be easy. I m good at being bad, but I m bad at being good. I don t know the first thing about good deeds.”
“It is possibly worth mentioning at this point that Mr. Young thought that paparazzi was a kind of Italian linoleum.”
“In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit.”
“I m half good and I m half bad. My mama is a very good girl and my daddy is a very bad boy. And I guess that leaves me somewhere sort of...here.”
“Everything in life has some good in it. And when something awful happens, the goodness stands out even more--it s sad, but that s the truth.”
“With or without God, good decisions can be made; But only with God will great decisions be made.”
“A smart model is a good model.”
“And he writhed inside at what seemed the cruelty and unfairness of the demand. He had not yet learned that if you do one good deed your reward usually is to do another and harder and better one.”
“Was aus Liebe getan wird, geschieht immer jenseits von Gut und Böse. (What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil.)”
“At that moment I remembered something Cal had told me: that there is beauty in darkness in everything. Sorrow in joy, life and death, thorns on the rose. I knew then that I could not escape pain and torment any more than I could give up joy and beauty”
“It s the fools that make all the trouble in the world, not the wicked.”
“It s God that s worrying me. That s the only thing that s worrying me. What if He doesn t exist? What if Rakitin s right -that it s an idea made up by men? Then, if He doesn t exist, man is the king of the earth, of the universe. Magnificent! Only how is he going to be good without God? That s the question. I always come back to that. Who is man going to love then? To whom will he be thankful? To whom will he sing the hymn? Rakitin laughs. Rakitin says that one can love humanity instead of God. Well, only an idiot can maintain that. I can t understand it. Life s easy for Rakitin. You d better think about the extension of civic rights, or of keeping down the price of meat. You will show your love for humanity more simply and directly by that, than by philosophy. I answered him: Well, but you, without a God, are more likely to raise the price of meat if it suits you, and make a rouble on every penny. He lost his temper. But after all, what is goodness? Answer that, Alyosha. Goodness is one thing with me and another with a Chinaman, so it s relative. Or isn t it? Is it not relative? A treacherous question! You won t laugh if I tell you it s kept me awake for two nights. I only wonder now how people can live and think nothing about it. Vanity!”
“The sun was good. The men of the llano were men of the sun. The men of the farms along the river were men of the moon. But we were all children of the white sun.”
“Poor Hayduke: won all his arguments but lost his immortal soul.”
“We must continually remind ourselves that there is a difference between what is natural and what is actually good for us.”
“Lena wished that love were something you could flip on and off. You could turn it on when you felt good about yourself and worthy of it and generous enough to return it. You could flip it off when you needed to hide or self-destruct ad had nothing at all to give.”
“Please understand something. God didn’t create evil in the world, but He did create free will, which allowed for the possibility of evil. Science isn’t like that. What you explore and find, God did create. It already exists. When you find it, you are discovering something God made. And everything God created is good. God said so in Genesis. He looked around at everything He had made and said, ‘It is very good.’” “How men use science can be evil, I’m with you a hundred percent on that,” Bishop added. “People can misuse items God created. But that has everything to do with man’s free will and tendency to evil, not science. What God created is good. So do what you were created to do. Break new scientific ground. Help us understand the dynamics of what God created. “You can’t protect the world from itself, Gina. You can only give good men the tools necessary to do their jobs. We need to know what is possible.”