A Quote by Barbara Grizzuti Harrison

In the face of evil, detachment is a dubious virtue.

Barbara Grizzuti Harrison

Quote Topics

Detachment Dubious Evil Face Virtue

Quote Author

Barbara Grizzuti Harrison
American - Writer
September 14, 1934 - April 24, 2002

We have only one story. All novels, all poetry, are built on the neverending contest in ourselves of good and evil. And it occurs to me that evil must constantly respawn, while good, while virtue, is immortal. Vice has always a new fresh young face, while virtue is venerable as nothing else in the world is.

John Steinbeck

Indifference looks like detachment, but it is not; indifference is simply no interest. Detachment is not absence of interest - detachment is absolute interest, tremendous interest, but still with the capacity of non-clinging. Enjoy the moment while it is there and when the moment starts disappearing, as everything is bound to disappear, let it go. That is detachment.

Rajneesh

Detachment is a flaw, not a virtue-don’t you realize that?

Steven Erikson

Virtue is the panacea for both body and mind. The virtuous person can be both healthy and happy. How is virtue to be cultivated? How can it express itself in daily practice? Through service to living beings, through seva. Virtue must flow through the triple channel of love, mercy and detachment, in order to feed the roots of seva.

Sathya Sai Baba

The Western world needs to ally themselves against the evil that is political Islam. To unite with its practitioners would be to unite with evil. Anyone who sees that as a virtue is simply enabling evil and, by proxy, is evil themselves.

Steven Crowder

Acquire the art of detachment, the virtue of method, and the quality of thoroughness, but above all the grace of humility.

William Osler

What is evil? Killing is evil, lying is evil, slandering is evil, abuse is evil, gossip is evil, envy is evil, hatred is evil, to cling to false doctrine is evil; all these things are evil. And what is the root of evil? Desire is the root of evil, illusion is the root of evil.

Gautama Buddha

Tolerance is the last virtue of a depraved society. When an immoral society has blatantly and proudly violated all the commandments, it insists upon one last virtue, tolerance for its immorality. It will not tolerate condemnation of its perversions. It creates a whole new world in which only the intolerant critic of intolerable evil is evil.

Hutton Gibson

Joy only can be achieved through complete detachment, the detachment which is egoless and superegoless.

Nirmala Srivastava

Absolute Evil is not the kingdom of hell. The inhabitants of hell are ourselves, i.e., those who pay our painful, embarrassing, humanistic duties to society and who are compromised by our intellectually dubious commitment to virtue, which can be defined by the perpetual smear-word of French polemic: the bourgeois. (Bourgeois equals humanist.) This word has long been anathema in France where categories are part of the ruling notion of logique. The word cannot be readily matched in England or America.

V. S. Pritchett

Natural good is' so intimately connected with moral good, and natural evil with moral evil, that I am as certain as if I heard a voice from heaven proclaim it, that God is on the side of virtue. He has learnt much, and has not lived in vain, who has practically discovered that most strict and necessary connection, that does and will ever exist between vice and misery, and virtue and happiness.

Charles Caleb Colton

The virtue of art lies in detachment, in sequestering one object from the embarrassing variety. Until one thing comes out from theconnection of things, there can be enjoyment, contemplation, but no thought.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

How far the existence of the Academy has influenced French literature, either for good or for evil, is an extremely dubious question.

Lytton Strachey

I have sought earnestly and with great diligence that good and high virtue by which man may draw closest to God... and as far as my intelligence would permit, I find that high virtue to be pure disinterest, that is, detachment from creatures. Our Lord said to Martha 'Unum est necessarium', which is to say; to be untroubled and pure, one thing is necessary and that is disinterest.

Meister Eckhart

Detachment is not about refusing to feel or not caring or turning away from those you love. Detachment is profoundly honest, grounded firmly in the truth of what is.