People are rarely diabolic or bent enthusiastically on evil. As a rule, they are only weak; they cannot resist temptation and thus give way to their evil drives.

The mind that becomes soiled in youth can never again be washed clean. I know this by my own experience, & to this day I cherish an unappeased bitterness against the unfaithful guardians of my young life, who not only permitted but compelled me to read an unexpurgated Bible through before I was 15 years old. None can do that and ever draw a clean sweet breath again on this side of the grave.

Fear is the devil's most powerful tool because he can't always convince a good man to do wrong, but he can paralyze his will with fright, keeping a good man from doing what is right. It eventually results in the same end.

I said it was a brutal thing."No, it was a human thing. You should not insult the brutes by such a misuse of that word; they have not deserved it.

Why is it that any time we speak of temptation we always speak of temptation as something that inclines us to wrong. We have more temptations to become good than we do to become bad.

Between two evils, I always pick the one I never tried before.