Every other knowledge is harmful to him who does not have knowledge of goodness.

There really are people, and institutions made up of people, who respond with hatred in the presence of goodness and would destroy the good insofar as it is in their power to do so. They do this not with conscious malice but blindly, lacking awareness of their own evil — indeed, seeking to avoid any such awareness.

Only those few people who practice it believe in goodness.

There are bad people who would be less dangerous if they were quite devoid of goodness.

For only the good doubt their own goodness, which is what makes them good in the first place. The bad know they are good, but the good know nothing. They spend their lives forgiving others, but they can't forgive themselves.

Look round the habitable world: how few
Know their own good, or knowing it, pursue.

The impurity of ignorance is in none so manifest as in the devout; for they act on their ignorance, and fill themselves and others with miserable scruples and hard thoughts of God, and are as apt to call good evil as other men are to call evil good.

Look round the habitable world, how few
Know their own good, or, knowing it, pursue!

He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.

Puede muy bien suceder, que ni él ni yo sepamos nada de lo que es bello y de lo que es bueno; pero hay esta diferencia, que él cree saberlo aunque no sepa nada, y yo, no sabiendo nada, creo no saber. Me parece, pues, que en esto yo, aunque poco más, era más sabio, porque no creía saber lo que no sabía

People who have always gone right don't know half as much about the nature and ways of going right as those do who have gone wrong.

Ultimately evil is done not so much by evil people, but by good people who do not know themselves and who do not probe deeply.