Daughter of Jove, relentless power,

Thou tamer of the human breast,

Whose iron scourge and tort'ring hour

The bad affright, afflict the best!

Thomas Gray (1716-1771): Hymn to Adversity.

America! half-brother of the world!

With something good and bad of every land.

Philip James Bailey (1816-1902): Scene, The Surface.

So slippery that

The fear's as bad as falling.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Cymbeline. Act iii. Sc. 3.

I must be cruel, only to be kind:

Thus bad begins, and worse remains behind.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Hamlet. Act iii. Sc. 4.

Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Macbeth. Act iii. Sc. 2.

They say, best men are moulded out of faults,

And, for the most, become much more the better

For being a little bad.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Measure for Measure. Act v. Sc. 1.

High on a throne of royal state, which far

Outshone the wealth of Ormus and of Ind,

Or where the gorgeous East with richest hand

Showers on her kings barbaric pearl and gold,

Satan exalted sat, by merit rais'd

To that bad eminence.

John Milton (1608-1674): Paradise Lost. Book ii. Line 1.

When good men die their goodness does not perish,

But lives though they are gone. As for the bad,

All that was theirs dies and is buried with them.

Euripides (484-406 b c): Temenidae. Frag. 734.

Bad in the best, though excellent in neither.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): The Passionate Pilgrim. iii.

A bold bad man.

Edmund Spenser (1553-1599): Faerie Queene. Book i. Canto i. St. 37.

This bold bad man.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): King Henry VIII. Act ii. Sc. 2.

The world is grown so bad,

That wrens make prey where eagles dare not perch.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): King Richard III. Act i. Sc. 3.

The world in all doth but two nations bear,—

The good, the bad; and these mixed everywhere.

Andrew Marvell (1620-1678): The Loyal Scot.

It's wiser being good than bad;

It's safer being meek than fierce;

It's fitter being sane than mad.

My own hope is, a sun will pierce

The thickest cloud earth ever stretched;

That after Last returns the First,

Though a wide compass round be fetched;

That what began best can't end worst,

Nor what God blessed once prove accurst.

Robert Browning (1812-1890): Apparent Failure. vii.