What's the difference between evil and virtuous?

Evil


Definition:

  • (a.) Having qualities tending to injury and mischief; having a nature or properties which tend to badness; mischievous; not good; worthless or deleterious; poor; as, an evil beast; and evil plant; an evil crop.
  • (a.) Having or exhibiting bad moral qualities; morally corrupt; wicked; wrong; vicious; as, evil conduct, thoughts, heart, words, and the like.
  • (a.) Producing or threatening sorrow, distress, injury, or calamity; unpropitious; calamitous; as, evil tidings; evil arrows; evil days.
  • (n.) Anything which impairs the happiness of a being or deprives a being of any good; anything which causes suffering of any kind to sentient beings; injury; mischief; harm; -- opposed to good.
  • (n.) Moral badness, or the deviation of a moral being from the principles of virtue imposed by conscience, or by the will of the Supreme Being, or by the principles of a lawful human authority; disposition to do wrong; moral offence; wickedness; depravity.
  • (n.) malady or disease; especially in the phrase king's evil, the scrofula.
  • (adv.) In an evil manner; not well; ill; badly; unhappily; injuriously; unkindly.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) King Salman of Saudi Arabia urged the redoubling of efforts to “eradicate this dangerous scourge and rid the world of its evils”.
  • (2) More evil than Clocky , the alarm clock that rolls away when you reach out to silence it, or the Puzzle Alarm , which makes you complete a simple puzzle before it'll go quiet, the Money Shredding Alarm Clock methodically destroys your cash unless you rouse yourself.
  • (3) To confront this evil – and defeat it, standing together for our values, for our security, for our prosperity.” Merkel gave a strong endorsement of Cameron’s reform strategy, saying that Britain’s demands were “not just understandable, but worthy of support”.
  • (4) "Our black, Muslim and Jewish citizens will sleep much less easily now the BBC has legitimised the BNP by treating its racist poison as the views of just another mainstream political party when it is so uniquely evil and dangerous."
  • (5) Richard now is presented, albeit somewhat inconsistently, as evil in response to social ostracism because of his ugly deformities.
  • (6) One view of these results stems from the belief that contraception is a necessary evil and the pill is the closest to a 'natural' sex act.
  • (7) Answer, citing Edmund Burke: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” This is a very British suicide.
  • (8) So that you know he's evil, he is dressed like a giant, bedraggled grey duckling, in a fur coat made up of bits of chewed-up wolf.
  • (9) How World of Warcraft train future soldiers One odder digression sees the two discussing whether or not MMORPGs, video games like World of Warcraft, are evil.
  • (10) The deputy prime minister branded the treatment meted out to the four-year-old by his mother, Magdelena Luczak, and stepfather, Mariusz Krezolek, as evil and vile, but suggested it was up to the whole of society to stop such tragedies.
  • (11) We make mistakes, and fall victim to the temptations of pride, and power, and sometimes evil.
  • (12) Questioned as to whether Google needs to alter its mission statement, which was twinned with the company mantra “don’t be evil, for the next stage of company growth in an interview with the Financial Times , Page responded: “We’re in a bit of uncharted territory.
  • (13) "I have been an evil witch, but now I can set light to the house and die happy."
  • (14) But at some point I realized that it's precisely because they continuously justify so much violence and aggression from their side that they have such a boundless compulsion to depict others as the Uniquely Primitive and Violent Evil.
  • (15) For here we see the depravity to which man can sink, the barbarity that unfolds when we begin to see our fellow human beings as somehow less than us, less worthy of dignity and life; we see how evil can, for a moment in time, triumph when good people do nothing."
  • (16) The US said it had removed North Korea – once a member of George Bush's axis of evil – from the terror list to breathe life into the stalled nuclear negotiations and would continue to pressure Pyongyang to resolve the abduction issue.
  • (17) As he described, with something approaching relish, the horrifying effect of a desperate eurozone willing to destroy the British economy, our industry and our society, purely to protect itself, I was reminded of the epic Last Judgement by John Martin, now in the Tate, which depicts the terrifying chaos as the good are separated from the evil damned.
  • (18) Channel One also branded Berezovsky an "evil genius," and a report on his demise quoted a senior member of the ruling United Russia , Vyacheslav Nikonov, saying he found it hard to believe the news was true.
  • (19) In recent months there have been series of protests against the intensifying campaign, with one Catholic leader denouncing the cross removals as an “evil act” .
  • (20) Time and again they said to me: ‘I knew I shouldn’t, but I had to weigh it up against what was happening, and it was the lesser of two evils.’ Years later many of these women are still ashamed of themselves.

Virtuous


Definition:

  • (a.) Possessing or exhibiting virtue.
  • (a.) Exhibiting manly courage and strength; valorous; valiant; brave.
  • (a.) Having power or efficacy; powerfully operative; efficacious; potent.
  • (a.) Having moral excellence; characterized by morality; upright; righteous; pure; as, a virtuous action.
  • (a.) Chaste; pure; -- applied especially to women.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) To stand virtuously in the grandstand looking down upon a world whose best efforts in inevitably imperfect times can never match your own exalted standards is a definition of irrelevance, not virtue.
  • (2) We insist that its citizens ought to be more virtuous versions of ourselves; when they fall short, our rage is terrible.
  • (3) Louise Glück’s prose-poem collection, Faithful and Virtuous Night , won for poetry.
  • (4) The zesty, citrus whiff of oranges freshens up the January kitchen, drawing a line under heavy celebratory food, and lighting up the virtuous, but enticing path to a lighter, healthier diet.
  • (5) In theory, there is a virtuous commercial circle, with programming created and owned in-house, performing well on ITV, then making megabucks when it is sold around the world.
  • (6) Twenty-First Century Populism , edited by Daniele Albertazzi and Duncan McDonnell, describes how populism appeals to voters because it "pits a virtuous and homogenous people against… dangerous 'others' who together are depicted as depriving the sovereign people of their rights, values, prosperity, identity and voice".
  • (7) The virtuous part is expected to be sold to a private bidder after the general election.
  • (8) They were the virtuous rebels who rose in the name of all kinds of folk gurus and deities, including Mao Zedong, to fight corrupt officials and evil rulers, and restore morality.
  • (9) Jen (from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) In Ang Lee's gravity-defying martial arts romp, women take most of the major roles, virtuous or villainous.
  • (10) In this context, treating human immunodeficiency virus-infected persons is a virtuous act, which meets both patients' and society's health needs and affirms the moral mission of health care.
  • (11) If the reaction to another Gawker story last year, since taken down, that possibly outed an executive is any indication, most news outlets already think of themselves as better and more virtuous than Gawker – they would never stoop so low as to publish a sex tape in the first place.
  • (12) Assuming that caring is a virtue, it is concluded that ethically virtuous nurses must possess the caring attributes and demonstrate caring actions.
  • (13) It is a virtuous circle, on which the quality of teaching and the rigour of courses has no bearing.
  • (14) The expansive, leisurely poems in the new collection, Faithful and Virtuous Night, by Louise Glück, are interspersed with one-paragraph prose-poems – miniature parables often framed as personal anecdotes, like this week's choice, A Work of Fiction.
  • (15) Premier League locked in to virtuous circle and likely to stay on its perch | Sean Ingle Read more The 20-year-old, who moved to the Stade Vélodrome last summer from Nantes for £1m, has attracted attention for his performances this season despite his club struggling in mid-table in Ligue 1.
  • (16) These two second-order factors of Net Affect and Authoritarian Virtuousness are further discussed in light of their intrafactor and interfactor relationships.
  • (17) And how can we create a virtuous cycle whereby better employment practices and opportunities for career development feed into higher productivity?
  • (18) Business, the media and, ultimately, individuals are caught – and the un-virtuous circles continue.
  • (19) "You could put everything back into a community and create a virtuous cycle."
  • (20) In other times and places, anger is seen not just as part and parcel of life, but even as a virtuous emotion.