Quotes About Corruption

Nothing matters in this goddamned lunatic asylum of a world but dough.

The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose. An evil soul producing holy witness Is like a villain with a smiling cheek, A goodly apple rotten at the heart. O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

The Devil hath power To assume a pleasing shape.

There's small choice in rotten apples.

Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied, And vice sometime by action dignified.

You common cry of curs! whose breath I hate As reek o' the rotten fens, whose loves I prize As the dead carcasses of unburied men That do corrupt my air, I banish you; And here remain with your uncertainty!

So may the outward shows be least themselves: The world is still deceived with ornament. In law, what plea so tainted and corrupt, But, being seasoned with a gracious voice, Obscures the show of evil? In religion, What damned error, but some sober brow Will bless it and approve it with a text, Hiding the grossness with fair ornament? There is no vice so simple but assumes Some mark of virtue on his outward parts.

Thou art a boil, a plague sore, an embossed carbuncle in my corrupted blood.

When devils will the blackest sins put on They do suggest at first with heavenly shows

I am indeed not her fool, but her corrupter of words. (Act III, sc. I, 37-38)

There is thy gold, worse poison to men's souls, Doing more murder in this loathsome world, Than these poor compounds that thou mayst not sell.

For by our ears our hearts oft tainted be.

I hate ingratitude more in a man than lying, vainness, babbling, drunkenness, or any taint of vice whose strong corruption inhabits our frail blood.

Bad is the world, and all will come to naught when such ill-dealing must be seen in thought.

The world is grown so bad that wrens make pray where eagles dare not perch

machinations, hollowness, treachery, and all ruinous disorders, follow us disquietly to our graves

An overflow of good converts to bad.

Now, Hamlet, where's Polonius? HAMLET At supper. KING CLAUDIUS At supper! where? HAMLET Not where he eats, but where he is eaten: a certain convocation of politic worms are e'en at him. Your worm is your only emperor for diet: we fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots: your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service, two dishes, but to one table: that's the end.

Virtue is chok'd with foul ambition

But no perfection is so absolute That some inpurity doth not pollute.

Oh, what a world is this when what is comely Envenoms him that bears it!

what Shakespeare really aimed to show: the destruction of a soul by demonic forces.

the essence of Macbeth is seeing a great and intelligent man succumb to the forces of darkness. What gives the tragedy