Status Updates From Cartas de um Diabo a Seu Ap...

"Despair...would show that he had believed in, and accepted, the Enemy's forgiveness of his other sins only because he himself did not fully feel their sinfulness-that in respect of the one vice which he really understands in its full depth of dishonor he cannot seek, nor credit the Mercy...Despair is a greater sin than any of the sins which provoke it."

"Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means, at the point of highest reality. A chastity or honesty, or mercy, which yields to danger will be chaste or honest or merciful only on conditions. Pilate was merciful till it became risky."

"In other words let him consider himself sufficiently identified with the women and children to feel hatred on their behalf, but NOT sufficiently identified to regard their enemies as his own and therefore proper objects of forgiveness."

Oof. This one is rampant in our society.