Ugliness and evil are necessary for growth but they may be experienced vicariously.

The first kind of evil is that which is caused to man by the circumstance that he is subject to genesis and destruction, or that he possesses a body.

No pleasure is evil in itself; but the means by which certain pleasures are gained bring pains many times greater than the pleasures.

Yama and niyama (restraints and observances) are aids to purification. They help to make the sadhana simpler. If they are neglected, many hurdles crop up during sadhana and it takes a very long time to up-root these evils. To save time and energy, it is necessary that one must resort to yama and niyama.

All authority of any kind, especially in the field of thought and understanding, is the most destructive, evil thing. Leaders destroy the followers and followers destroy the leaders. You have to be your own teacher and your own disciple. You have to question everything that man has accepted as valuable, as necessary.

When we say that pleasure is the end, we do not mean the pleasure of the profligate or that which depends on physical enjoyment--as some think who do not understand our teachings, disagree with them, or give them an evil interpretation--but by pleasure we mean the state wherein the body is free from pain and the mind from anxiety.

Are the great spiritual teachings really advocating that we fight evil because we are on the side of light, the side of peace? Are they telling us to fight against that other 'undesirable' side, the bad and the black. That is a big question. If there is wisdom in the sacred teachings, there should not be any war. As long as a person is involved with warfare, trying to defend or attack, then his action is not sacred; it is mundane, dualistic, a battlefield situation.

The non-doing of any evil, the performance of what's skillful, the cleansing of one's own mind: this is the teaching of the Awakened.

As the impure mind has an evil influence and infects others with evil, so pure mind has an influence for good and so transforms others in their innermost character.

According to the Sutras, evil deeds result in hardships and good deeds result in blessings.

Attack the evil that is within yourself, rather than attacking the evil that is in others.

The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary. There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.

We are so full of apprehensions, fears, that we don't know exactly to what it points... a great change of our psychoglogical attitude is imminent, that is certain...because we need more understanding of human nature because ...the only real danger that exists is man himself... and we know nothing of man - his psyche should be studied because we are the origin of all coming evil.

If you disclose your alms, even then it is well done, but if you keep them secret, and give them to the poor, then that is better still for you;?and this wipes off from you some of your evil deeds.

This is the secret of spiritual life: to think that I am the Atman and not the body, and that the whole of this universe with all its relations, with all its good and all its evil, is but as a series of paintings...scenes on a canvas...of which I am the witness.

My Gita tells me that evil can never result from a good action.

They that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is the root of all evil.

What is reprehensible is that while leading good lives themselves and abhorring those of wicked men, some, fearing to offend, shut their eyes to evil deeds instead of condemning them and pointing out their malice.

To fear death is nothing other than to think oneself wise when one is not. For it is to think one knows what one does not know. No one knows whether death may not even turn out to be the greatest blessings of human beings. And yet people fear it as if they knew for certain it is the greatest evil.

All the evils that men cause to each other because of certain desires, or opinions or religious principles, are rooted in ignorance. [All hatred would come to an end] when the earth was flooded with the knowledge of God.

A man asked Muhammad what was the mark whereby he might know the reality of his faith. Muhammad said, 'If thou derive pleasure from the good which thou hast performed and thou be grieved for the evil which thou hast committed, thou art a true believer.' The man said. 'In what doth a fault really consist' Muhammad said, 'when action pricketh thy conscience, forsake it.'

The error of the ignorant goes so far as to say that God's power is insufficient, because he has given to this Universe the properties which they imagine cause these great evils, and which do not help all evil-disposed persons to obtain the evil which they seek, and to bring their evil souls to the aim of their desires, though these, as we have shown, are really without limit.

Violence in any form is evil and to kill innocent animals is tantamount to blatant savagery.