...in the worst of circumstances, the hypocrite who pretends to be good does less harm than the public sinner.

The wicked make all God's good works serve evil purposes but the person of good will, to the contrary, makes the evil doings of the wicked serve good purposes.

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

Pleasure is the bait of sin

And grant the bad what happiness they would / One they must want, which is to pass for good.

Good people avoid sin because they love goodness, Wicked people avoid sin because they fear punishment.

But no matter how much parents and grandparents may have sinned against the child, the man who is really adult will accept these sins as his own condition which has to be reckoned with. Only a fool is interested in other people's guilt, since he cannot alter it. The wise man learns only from his own guilt. He will ask himself: Who am I that all this should happen to me? To find the answer to this fateful question he will look into his own heart.

[Good men avoid sin from the love of virtue; Wicked men avoid sin from a fear of punishment.]

People are dupes, and wicked too. That is what makes it interesting to get them better.

In many criminals, especially youthful ones, it is possible to detect a very powerful sense of guilt which existed before the crime, and is therefore not its result but its motive. It is as if it was a relief to be able to fasten this unconscious sense of guilt on to something real and immediate.

Here's to the few who forgive what you do, and the fewer who don't even care

Until recently each generation found it more expedient to plead guilty to the charge of being young and ignorant, easier to take the punishment meted out by the older generation (which had itself confessed to the same crime short years before). The command to grow up at once was more bearable than the faceless horror of wavering purpose, which was youth.

the selfish gladly consoled themselves with the thought that though it was merciful at least it was not liberal;

There is very little deliberate wickedness in the world. The stupidity of our selfishness gives much the same results indeed, but in the ethical laboratory it shows a different nature.