Malice

-On the broad road-

As charcoal to embers and as wood to fire,

so is a quarrelsome man for kindling strife.

Proverbs 26:21

“Do what you will, there is going to be some benevolence, as well as some malice, in your patient’s soul.  The great thing to do is to direct the malice to his immediate neighbors whom he meets every day and to thrust his benevolence out to the remote circumference, to people he does not know.  The malice thus becomes wholly real and the benevolence largely imaginary.”

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, pg. 28, 1st para.  HaperCollins ed. 2001

Photo credit:  T. Link