"He said the wicked know that if the ill they do be of sufficient horror men will not speak against it. That men have just enough stomach for small evils and only these will they oppose. He said that true evil has power to sober the smalldoer against his own deeds and in the contemplation of that evil he may even find the path of righteousness which has been foreign to his feet and may have no power but to go upon it. Even this man may be appalled at what is revealed to him and seek some order to stand against it. Yet in all of this there are two things which perhaps he will not know. He will not know that while the order which the righteous seek is never righteousness itself but is only order, the disorder of evil is in fact the thing itself. Nor will he know that while the righteous are hampered at every turn by their ignorance of evil to the evil all is plain, light and dark alike. This man of which we speak will seek to impose order and lineage upon things which rightly have none. He will call upon the world itself to testify as to the truth of what are in fact but his desires. In his final incarnation he may seek to indemnify his words with blood for by now he will have discovered that words pale and lose their savor while pain is always new."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Horror authorsNovelists from the United StatesEssayists from the United StatesShort story writers from the United StatesNational Book Award winners
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Imported from EN Wikiquote
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Cormac_McCarthy
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Cormac McCarthy
Cormac McCarthy (born Charles Joseph McCarthy Jr.; July 20, 1933 – June 13, 2023) was an American novelist, playwright, short-story writer, and screenwriter. He wrote twelve novels, spanning the Southern Gothic, Western, modernist, and post-apocalyptic fiction genres.
72 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Cormac McCarthy →
Related Quotes
"As long as you are breathing you can always be more scared."
"And she waited again at the front door with it open, poised between the maw of the dead and loveless house and the ou…"
"There's no such thing as life without bloodshed. I think the notion that the species can be improved in some way, tha…"
": —Is it true?"
"I'm not interested in writing short stories. Anything that doesn't take years of your life and drive you to suicide h…"
"I don't think goodness is something that you learn. If you're left adrift in the world to learn goodness from it, you…"
"Yes, he said. I busted him and he busted me. That's fair, ain't it? The boy was still silent, calmly incredulous. No,…"
"The man sat watching the road, the weedstem twirling in his mouth and the threadthin shadow of it going long and shor…"
"And as he lay there a far crack of lightning went bluely down the sky and bequeathed him in an embryonic bird's first…"
"What discordant vespers do the tinker's goods chime through the long twilight and over the brindled forest road, him …"