I too have sworn heedlessly and all the time, I have had this most repulsive and death-dealing habit. I'm telling your graces; from the moment I began to serve God , and saw what evil there is in forswearing oneself, I grew very afraid indeed, and out of fear I applied the brakes to this old, old, habit.
Riches and honor are what everyone desires, but if they can be gained only by doing evil, they must not be held. Don't worry about not being in office, worry about qualifying yourself for office. Don't worry that no one knows you, but seek to be worthy of being known.
It is handsomer to remain in the establishment better than the establishment, and conduct that in the best manner, than to make asally against evil by some single improvement, without supporting it by a total regeneration.
All acts of living become bad by ten things, and by avoiding the ten things they become good. There are three evils of the body, four evils of the tongue, and three evils of the mind.
About the nature of human beings. I discovered that confronted by temptation, we will always fall. Given the right circumstances, every human being on this earth would be willing to commit evil.
The Law is not in fault, but our evil and wicked nature; even as a heap of lime is still and quiet until water is poured on it, but then it begins to smoke and burn, not from the fault of the water, but from the nature of the lime, which will not endure it.
The intelligent person is not one who merely knows what is good and what is bad. The intelligent person is one who, when he sees what is good, follows it, and when he sees evil, shuns it.
Anything which is a living and not a dying body... will have to be an incarnate will to power, it will strive to grow, spread, seize, become predominant - not from any morality or immorality but because it is living and because life simply is will to power... 'Exploitation'... belongs to the essence of what lives, as a basic organic function; it is a consequence of the will to power, which is after all the will to life.
The time will come when the evil forms we have known can no more be organized. Man's culture can spare nothing, wants all material. He is to convert all impediments into instruments, all enemies into power.
Every reform by violence is to be deprecated, because it does little to correct the evil while men remain as they are, and because wisdom has no need of violence.
'Men die of the diseases which they have studied most,' remarked the surgeon, snipping off the end of a cigar with all his professional neatness and finish. 'It's as if the morbid condition was an evil creature which, when it found itself closely hunted, flew at the throat of its pursuer. If you worry the microbes too much they may worry you. I've seen cases of it, and not necessarily in microbic diseases either. There was, of course, the well-known instance of Liston and the aneurism; and a dozen others that I could mention.'
It is the nature of the brute to remain where he is (not to progress); it is the nature of man to seek good and avoid evil; it is the nature of God to seek neither, but just to be eternally blissful. Let us be God!