# Quote — Cormac McCarthy, The Crossing

> He said the wicked know that if the ill they do be of sufficient horror men will not speak against it. That men have just enough stomach for small evils and only these will they oppose. He said that true evil has power to sober the smalldoer against his own deeds and in the contemplation of that evil he may even find the path of righteousness which has been foreign to his feet and may have no power but to go upon it. Even this man may be appalled at what is revealed to him and seek some order to stand against it. Yet in all of this there are two things which perhaps he will not know. He will not know that while the order which the righteous seek is never righteousness itself but is only order, the disorder of evil is in fact the thing itself. Nor will he know that while the righteous are hampered at every turn by their ignorance of evil to the evil all is plain, light and dark alike. This man of which we speak will seek to impose order and lineage upon things which rightly have none. He will call upon the world itself to testify as to the truth of what are in fact but his desires. In his final incarnation he may seek to indemnify his words with blood for by now he will have discovered that words pale and lose their savor while pain is always new.

- Author: [Cormac McCarthy](https://www.leafyquotes.com/cormac-mccarthy.md)
- Book: [The Crossing](https://www.leafyquotes.com/cormac-mccarthy/the-crossing.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Cormac_McCarthy#The_Crossing_(1994)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/cormac-mccarthy/the-crossing/he-said-the

## More from this book

> If people knew the story of their lives how many would then elect to live them?

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/cormac-mccarthy/the-crossing/if-people-knew.md)

> Billy asked him if such men as had stole his eyes were only products of the war but the blind man said that since war itself was their very doing that could hardly be the case.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/cormac-mccarthy/the-crossing/billy-asked-him.md)

> He said that while one would like to say that God will punish those who do such things and that people often speak in just this way it was his experience that God could not be spoken for and that men with wicked histories often enjoyed lives of comfort and that they died in peace and were buried with honor. He said that it was a mistake to expect too much of justice in this world. He said that the notion that evil is seldom rewarded was greatly overspoken for if there were no advantage to it then men would shun it and how could virtue then be attached to its repudiation?

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/cormac-mccarthy/the-crossing/he-said-that.md)