Quotes on Malice

As the malicious disposition of mankind is too well known, and the cruel pleasure which they take in destroying the reputation of others, the use we are to make of this knowledge is, to afford no handle for reproach; for bad as the world is, it seldom falls on anyone who hath not given some slight cause for censure.
- Henry Fielding

There is an alchemy of quiet malice by which women can concoct a subtle poison from ordinary trifles.
- Nathaniel Hawthorne

Malice often takes the garb of truth.
- William Hazlitt (1)

The venom that chills and curdles the warm current of life in man is secreted only in creeping and cold-blooded creatures; and the inveterate malignity that never forgets or forgives is found only in base and ignoble natures, whose aims are selfish, whose means are indirect, cowardly, and treacherous.
- George Stillman Hillard

Malice blunts the point of wit.
- Douglas William Jerrold

Malice is poisoned by her own venom.
- Johann Kaspar Lavater (John Caspar Lavater)

Truth, wisdom, love, seek reasons; malice only seeks causes.
- Johann Kaspar Lavater (John Caspar Lavater)

Malice, scorned, puts out itself; but, argued, gives a kind of credit to a false accusation.
- Philip Massinger

There is no rampart that will hold out against malice.
- Moliere (pseudonym of Jean Baptiste Poquelin)

Even in the midst of compassion we feel within I know not what tart sweet titillation of malicious pleasure in seeing others suffer; children have the same feeling.
- Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

When malice has reason on its side, it looks forth bravely, and displays that reason in all its luster. When austerity and self-denial have not realized true happiness, and the soul returns to the dictates of nature, the reaction is fearfully extravagant.
- Blaise Pascal

When malice is joined to envy, there is given forth poisonous and feculent matter, as ink from the cuttle-fish.
- Plutarch

Publish not men's secret faults, for by disgracing them you make yourself of no repute.
- Moslih Eddin (Muslih-un-Din) Saadi (Sadi)

Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate, nor set down aught in malice.
- William Shakespeare

Malice, in its false witness, promotes its tale with so cunning a confusion; so mingles truths with falsehoods, surmises with certainties, causes of no moment with matters capital, that the accused can absolutely neither grant nor deny, plead innocence nor confess guilt.
- Sir Philip Sidney (Sydney)

Malice can always find a mark to shoot at, and a pretence to fire.
- Charles Simmons (2)

But for that blindness which is inseparable from malice, what terrible powers of evil would it possess! Fortunately for the world, its venom, like that of the rattlesnake, when most poisonous, clouds the eye of the reptile, and defeats its aim.
- William Gilmore Simms

Malice drinketh up the greater part of its own poison.
- Socrates

Malice is of the boomerang character, and is apt to turn upon the projector.
- William Makepeace Thackeray

Found at giga-usa.net