I used to think I knew what was right and what was wrong, and who the good guys are, and who the bad guys are. Then the world got very gray, and I didn't know anything for a long time

Purity most often leads to pride or to despair, not to holiness. Because holiness is about union, and purity is about separation.

A general who wages war for a republic whose cause is not just would make devils of soldiers, and turn honor to evil.

Anna Wren was not for him. She was of a different class than he, and, moreover, she was a respectable widow from the village. She wasn't a sophisticated society lady who might consider a liaison...

"You can't kill Myron, Royce," Hadrian said, rapidly pulling the monk away as if he had found a child playing with a wild bear. "It would be like killing a puppy."

Evil one may attain easily and in abundance: smooth is the way and it dwellth very nigh. But in front of virtue have the deathless gods set sweat: long is the way thereto and steep and rough at first....

Virtue will cut your head off, vice will only cut your hair.

We should poison him," Savannah said. "Why do you always want to poison people?" Dugas asked her. "I don't want to poison people. I want to poison d'Ambray."

"This is payback, isn't it?" Jim glared at me. "Don't be ridiculous," I told him. "As the Consort of the Pack, I'm far above petty revenge."

I want you to understand me. This isn't vengeance. This is punishment.

I do not wish to quarrel with any man or nation. I do not wish to split hairs, to make fine distinctions, or set myself up as better than my neighbors. I seek rather, I may say, even an excuse for...

Is there not a sort of blood shed when the conscience is wounded? Through this wound a man's real manhood and immortality flow out, and he bleeds to an everlasting death.

You are trying to kidnap what I have rightfully stolen, and I think it quite ungentlemanly.

I'd learned something, all right, about the power of attraction, and Nee was right, it was potent. But I'd also learned that the self might want one thing, but that didn't mean it was right. Isn't...

One day you will be called upon to break a big law in the name of justice and rationality. Everything will depend on it. You have to be ready. How are you going to prepare for that day when it really...

And confronting these men, wild and terrible as we agree that they were, there were men of quite another kind, smiling and adorned with ribbons and stars, silk stockinged, yellow gloved and with...

Can human nature ever be wholly and radically transformed? Can the man whom God made good be made wicked by man? Can the soul be reshaped in its entirety by destiny and made evil because destiny is...

Your money or your life!

Is this what is called remorse of conscience or repentance? I do not know, and I cannot tell to this day. Perhaps this remembrance even now contains something pleasurable for my passions. No - - what...

She understood the nature of sin and knew that its most volatile form was the kind that did not recognize itself.

For at every stage of your civilizations there are numbers of you who put aside selfishness and dedicate their lives in service to something they see as being greater than themselves. I say you may...

The world may be mean, but people don't have to be, not if they refuse.

A quiet conscience makes one strong!

The amorality of nature is accepted, whether it takes the form of a monsoon, an elephant in musth, or a disease; but being subjected helplessly to the will of others is not, for human behavior always...

Evans understood that if Nakamura chose, it would be indiscriminate and their number would include the sickest - and perhaps the sickest, because they were of least use to Nakamura - and that all of...

They understand not only evil, it seemed, but the extravagance of tricks with which evil presents itself as good.

Dorothy L. Sayers used to say that mystery stories were the only moral fiction of the modern world - because in a mystery, you were guaranteed to see that the bad got punished, the good got rewarded...

The good are innocent and create justice. The bad are guilty, which is why they invent mercy.

Were you proposing to shoot these people in cold blood, sergeant?""Nossir. Just a warning shot inna head, sir.

Everything done, even the most innocent in appearance, is already guilty, already corrupted; it is thrown into the unclean flow of formation and can never swim back against the current again.