Is it better for a man to have chosen evil than to have good imposed upon him?

Quizás el hombre que elige el mal es en cierto modo mejor que aquel a quien se le impone el bien,

What does God want? Does God want goodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses the bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed upon him?

There is the devastatingly simple, yet profound, moral dilemma, which underlies the book: is it better for a man to choose to be bad than to be conditioned to be good?

Человек, выбравший Зло, в определенной степени лучше того, кого принудили к Добру.

he who has the good to his hand and chooses the bad, that the good he complains of may not come to him.

It may not be nice to be good, 6655321. It may be horrible to be good. And when I say that to you I realize how self-contradictory that sounds. I know I shall have many sleepless nights about this. What does God want? Does God want goodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses the bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed upon him?

For no man is voluntarily bad; but the bad become bad by reason of an ill disposition of the body and bad education, things which are hateful to every man and happen to him against his will.

Good and bad men are each less so than they seem.

I see the Master as a man having terrible choices to make; whatever he chooses will do harm, but maybe if he does the right thing, a little less harm will come about than if he chooses wrong. God preserve me from having to make that sort of choice.

the good of man, and likewise his ill, lies in how he exercises his choice, while everything else is nothing to us,

No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.

Beyond all explanations which a good brain can give, why do we choose the worse and not the better, why hate rather than love, why greed and not generosity, why self-centred activity and not open total action? Why be mean when there are soaring mountains and flashing streams? Why jealousy and not love? Why?

Wenn ich ihn schlecht nenne, so darum, weil er das Gute ebenso aus einer Laune, aus einem Einfall tut wie das Schlechte, welches ich ihm zutraue. Er wird nie das Böse tun, um etwas zu erreichen, wie andere ihre Verbrechen begehen, um Geld zu besitzen, eine Frau zu erobern oder Macht zu gewinnen, er wird es tun, wenn es sinnlos ist, vielleicht, denn bei ihm sind immer zwei Dinge möglich, das Schlechte und das Gute, und der Zufall entscheidet.